A Chat with Gabriel Kahane: Ramen, Punch Brothers, and Hanging with Franz

Miki Cloud, AFC violinist and co-curator of Old Friend, met with this week's guest artist, Gabriel Kahane to talk Schubert, food, and their collaboration.

Miki Cloud: Our first creative meeting for this collaboration was at New York's Toto Ramen - a cult favorite.  Do you think Schubert would be a ramen fan, and if so, what would his order be?  (Shio, miso, tonkotsu, veggie or spicy? ) 

GK: Schubert would absolutely have been a ramen fan, but I'm fairly certain that he, being such a sickly fellow, would have been diagnosed with some super annoying allergy that would have mostly prevented him from eating ramen, except at lame-o gluten-free vegan ramen joints. This would then precipitate him to ignore his allergy and go on a three day ramen binge where he'd eat three bowls of tonkotsu ramen daily until he fell into a noodle-induced stupor, leading to the recently discovered late masterpiece, Ramengesang.

MC: Describe your ideal day hanging out with Schubert.  I'll assume you're both a bit hungover post-schubertiade.

GK: If I had an opportunity to hang out with Schubert, I would sit him down over Smith Oatmeal Stout (which I think he would like) in a quiet pub and pepper him with questions about musical architecture. For like sixteen hours.   

MC: How was it writing for us -- maintaing your voice without, well, your voice?  Were you inspired by the G Major Quartet?

GK: I absolutely adored writing for A Far Cry. This project came about in a fairly unusual way for me, inasmuch as I kind of cold-called you, Miki, and said, "I'd love to do something for you guys!" I was so bowled over by how great your recording of Ted [Hearne]'s Law of Mosaics was, and just couldn't wait to work with a bunch of whipsmart musicians like yourselves. That being said, I got seriously stuck writing this piece. I was initially planning to write a piece inspired by the slow movement of the G Major Quartet that's on the second half of the program, but about ten or twelve minutes of music into the piece (and about a month's time gone by), I realized that I was writing something that didn't feel authentic to me. So I scrapped every note I'd written and began again. In the end, the piece I wrote is Schubertian inasmuch as it very specifically references a song of mine, a technique to which Schubert was in no way a stranger. As to the question of maintaining my compositional voice in the absence of the human voice, and my voice specifically — I think I will need to hear the piece before I know whether or not it "sounds like me". And I can't wait!

MC: As a multi-faceted creative person, how do you manage your time?  Do you keep yourself on a strict schedule?

GK: Ugh. Tough question. Often times, I simply don't manage time very well. I can become overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done and instead get nothing done. When I am working well, I turn off the modem and phone before I go to sleep, wake up and make a very detailed schedule of tasks to accomplish — sometimes dividing up the day into chunks as small as 15 minutes — and then complete the list before turning on modem/gadgets that serve as distraction... I'm presently trying to get back to that place. 

MC: Are you excited to be back in Boston?

GK: I am very excited to be back in Boston. I spent only my freshman year at NEC [as a jazz piano major (!)]  before transferring to Brown, but during that formative time, I heard dozens of concerts at Jordan Hall, and have extremely fond memories of the warmth of that space. I haven't set foot in the building in more than fifteen years, so I am feeling fuzzily nostalgic.

MC: How has it been touring with Punch Brothers?  Have they influenced your composing and songwriting?  

GK: Touring with Punch Brothers has been one of the absolute highlights of my career. Tonight I'll play my 40th and final show of the year opening for the band, and I have enjoyed each and every gig. One of the things that sets this kind of touring apart from the work that I do in the world of concert music is that there's a totally different set of concert-going mores. When I take the stage, particularly as an opening act, there's no assumption that the audience will be quiet and attentive unless I can convince them that I've earned their attention. For me, wrangling a club audience into happy submission, if I can call it that, has been a huge joy. But it's not simply about willing an audience to be quiet — there's also the fact that audiences in club settings will respond vocally during pieces in a way that can be hugely gratifying, much in the same way as was common during Mozart's time. I think the classical music world would benefit from that ethos. 

As to Punch Brothers themselves — they are one of the truly great chamber ensembles of our time, and also one of the most hard-working bands I've had the pleasure to know. Watching them engaged in grueling rehearsal at soundcheck every day sets a high bar for work ethic among touring acts, and has made me want to work harder. Dave Sinko, the brilliant sound engineer for the band, records every show, and the boys tend to listen to every show that they play so that they know what to work on for the next one. It's inspiring and intimidating to know musicians who are that committed to progress.

MC: This is such a rich collaboration.  We can't wait to make music with you this week!  

Old Friend Notes

Our friendly December show is right around the corner, and here's your chance to read up on what we'll be performing before you even walk in the door! We have a note from Gabriel on his new piece and a "fantasia" on Schubert and his last quartet by our resident musicologist, Kathryn Bacasmot. (The notes for all the songs will be delivered from the stage, Schubertiade-style!) 

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Gabriel Kahane: Freight and Salvage

Freight & Salvage, for string orchestra, is an exploration of the relationship between my work as a songwriter on the one hand, and my work in more formal musical environments, e.g., the concert hall in which you are sitting, on the other! As much as Freight & Salvage sounds little like Schubert or Mahler, it is nevertheless deeply indebted to both of those titans, in the sense that as master songwriters, they found ways to re-use and deepen material from their songs in larger instrumental works. In writing this piece, I thought a great deal about Schubert's journey that led him to his final instrumental masterpieces, and in particular, the last three string quartets, piano sonatas, and the cello quintet.

From an architectural standpoint, however, Freight & Salvage is much more indebted to Bartok, who was a great proponent of the arch form, which is the structure I've used in this piece. To understand an arch form, imagine that a mirror is held up to the first half of a piece, so that the second half resembles the first half, but with the themes or sections played in the opposite order in which they first appeared. In this case, the form is A-B-C-D-C-B-A, followed by the coda, and the entire form (excepting the coda) is a mirror image of itself. The outer most part of the form (A) is a chaotic, fragmented paroxysm of scattered bits of information that nevertheless contains all the DNA for the whole piece. This is followed by a lyrical section (B) that gradually picks up steam until we reach (C), an energetic tune with a bit of a lilt. This is followed by (D), the figurative center-of-the-onion, after which the sections re-appear in reverse order (C - B - A), finally giving way to the coda, in which the original (song) source material is revealed. 

- Gabriel Kahane

Franz Schubert: String Quartet in G major, D. 887

He was the son of a schoolmaster who auditioned for Antonio Salieri and gained membership in
the imperial Hofkapelle (now the Vienna Boys Choir). Despite his training and opportunities, 
and the support of a music-loving family with whom he played chamber music as a child, his
need for income guided him back to the family profession: school teaching. That proved
unsatisfying, and he embarked on a lifetime of composing and wandering, never really having a
stable home—but perhaps never really wanting one. Schubert was never going to be the kind of
person who would schmooze with the aristocracy. He seemingly preferred the company of his
“Bildung circle,” a small group of friends who pursued intellectual and cultural self-
improvement together, and his Schubertiads where his works could be performed in an intimate
setting being heard by people who were more interested in actively listening than being
entertained. He was apparently a man of extremes; cordial and jovial, yet haunted by deep
melancholy and a snap of temper, and whenever he was flush with money he immediately spent
it on things like drinks and concerts with friends (on one occasion he bought tickets to see
Paganini). 

At age twenty Schubert had written an astonishing amount of music, including five symphonies, 
hundreds of songs, and a host of other works—but had no public recognition at all. The sheer
volume astonished Beethoven who apparently was shown scores of Schubert’s pieces on his
deathbed. By then Schubert was thirty years old, and the amount had swelled to nine symphonies
(in varying levels of completion), six hundred songs, dozens of chamber works, multiple masses
and more. For perspective, by the time Beethoven was that age, he was premiering his first
symphony. One year after Beethoven’s death a concert was held on the exact anniversary date of
his passing. The music would be entirely by Schubert, the first time he presented an entire
evening of his own works for the public. Included on that program was the first movement of
what would turn out to be his last quartet, the G major. Coincidentally the work was performed
by the Schuppanzigh quartet (minus Schuppanzigh, himself, who was indisposed that evening), 
the same group that premiered Beethoven’s last quartet, the op. 135. Strangely, both final
quartets were written the same year, in 1826. Eight months after the concert Schubert was dead, 
too, at age thirty-one. Though their respective last quartets were linked by circumstance, there is
no record that the two composers ever met in person, though they lived and worked in the same
city, Vienna, for Schubert’s entire life. 

In Schubert’s final song cycle, Winterreise, the protagonist address a lonely organ grinder to
whom “no one wants to listen, no one looks at...” by pondering in the last stanza: “Strange old
man, shall I go with you? Will you grind your hurdy-gurdy to my songs?” It begs us to wonder if
Schubert feared his works would go unrecalled by future generations, his name forgotten. 
Though he certainly had brushes with notoriety during his own lifetime, his submissions to
publishers were sometimes returned with the excuse that the musical language was “too difficult
for trifles,” and that “...the public does not yet sufficiently and generally understand the peculiar, 
often ingenious, but perhaps now and then somewhat curious procedures of your mind's
creations.” What did the audience think hearing the stark major/minor chords that open the G
major quartet for the first time? How did they hear it when their ears were used to the likes of
Mozart and Rossini? How fitting that the memory of Beethoven was in the space when Schubert
unveiled the scope and drama of the quartet. It was, after all, thanks to these two men that the
genre was pushed out from private quarters and private entertainment and forced to encompass
entire emotional worlds, and contain the potency of the symphonic realm within the confines of
limited players. For that, among many other reasons, Schubert will never be forgotten.

Our WCRB Podcast

On Sunday, 12/13 at 7 PM, A Far Cry's performance of "A Tale Of Two Sixes" (our Corelli/Handel op. 6 love-fest) will be playing on WCRB 99.5 as part of a new podcast, The Answered Question. Alan McClellan interviews Jae and Michael as part of the fun. There's a nice write-up of the show excerpted below - and if you're not able to tune in in person, you can stream it here after the fact! Enjoy! 

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A Far Cry - the name of this orchestra brings to mind something out of the ordinary, off the beaten track, something special. And that's just what A Far Cry delivers. 

Formed in 2007 in Jamaica Plain, A Far Cry is the Chamber Orchestra in Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The group still rehearses in Jamaica Plain, at a storefront they share with a couple of small theater groups.

It's an unassuming place, with a little shingle out front - and inside, some of the best music-making in town. Last week the Criers were rehearsing "A Tale of Two Sixes" - a concert of 6 Concerti grossi by Arcangelo Corelli and George Frideric Handel. The concerti come from each of the composers' Opus 6 collections - those are the two sixes in the title.

On most of its programs, A Far Cry creates "outside the box" combinations - a program might include a Handel Concerto Grosso, but it might be combined with something by Stravinsky, or even a newly-commissioned piece.

But for this concert, the Criers are focusing in on string music from early 18th century Europe - concertos by Corelli, the great violinist of Rome, who invented the Concerto Grosso, and Handel, the brilliant young opera composer, the toast of London, who took the Concerto Grosso to new heights of inventiveness.

They met in 1707 or 1708, on Handel¹s tour of Italy.  Handel studied with Corelli while he was visiting Rome. Handel was an up-and-coming young composer, and Corelli was ready for retirement. But the younger composer must have been dazzled, in the presence of the great violin virtuoso of his generation. 

Handel couldn¹t help but be influenced by Corelli¹s style, and he even arranged his opus numbers so that his collection of concerti grossi would come out as Op. 6, just like those of his famous teacher.

Executive Director Search

A Far Cry is in the midst of a search for the next, crucial, member of our organization - our first-ever full-time Executive Director. We've been getting closer and closer to this juncture for a long time and have benefitted hugely from the near-superhuman efforts of Kelly Reed, our first Administrative Director, and then Graham Wright, our Interim Executive Director. 

Now it's go time. 

The job description is making the rounds, and we're getting some great submissions. Meanwhile, we thought we'd go ahead and post it here on our own turf. And in true Crier style, we have two documents to peruse: 

our official job description, and our version of "the straight dope" - some plain, real, talk about what's in store, both for you, and for us! 

Take a look! And feel free to share! 

Official AFC job description 

The Straight Dope

#ArtsMatterDay

Today is #ArtsMatterDay.

Here's a gorgeous shot (taken by Eric Antoniou) of A Far Cry's last Jordan Hall concert. We were lucky enough to share the stage with former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky who lit up the stage on both halves of the concert - here reading a hilarious translation of Rabelais' satirical giant story, and in the first half, reading the poem "Verklarte Nacht" before A Far Cry set out to play the Schoenberg work that referenced it. Arts matter in more ways than can ever be counted, but there were two moments of silence in that performance that brought home one of the million ways in which they can hit.

The first was right after Pinsky read "Verklarte Nacht" - with gravity and grace, lingering on words and unpacking meaning. This was a moment for everyone, but especially the musicians, who had just been given a new window into the piece we were about to play. The space around us literally grew. Each note became more real. Every phrase had more direction, more weight, more narrative substance.

The second pause was at the end of the piece, about half an hour later. As we finished playing, Jordan Hall fell into silence; a beautiful and utterly still shared silence that lasted. This silence felt different from the first; it was a gift that we were giving each other, and in some ways it was a gift directly from our listeners, who were the ones who decided, in the end, when the piece was finally over.

We are all in this process together. We influence and inspire each other in so many ways, known and unknown.

Art makes it possible.

#ArtsMatter

Caroline Shaw (ft. Kanye West)

Composer extraordinaire and dear friend of the group Caroline Shaw has just broken the internet, or at least our Facebook feeds, via a special collaboration with Kanye West, a remix of his single "Say You Will."

Caroline was performing live last week with Kanye, a performance that prompted the New Yorker’s Alex Ross to ask the question: can contemporary classical music save hip hop?

We are flabbergasted, overjoyed, and genuinely moved by this beautiful track!

Stream Tonight's Concert FREE

If you're in Boston tonight, come see the concert in person!  

Rush tickets are HALF-PRICE at the NEC Box Office from 7:30 pm.

If you're further afield, our Live-Streaming program is back!   To kick of Season 9, the stream of our very first Jordan Hall concert, Gargantua, is FREE!  Just tune into littledoglive.com tonight at 8:00 pm to join us in Jordan Hall.  For the full concert experience, enjoy these thoughtfully prepared program notes as you listen along.    

Schoenberg:  Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night)
Françaix: The Incredible Tales of the Great Gargantua

Two larger-than-life narrative pieces: Schoenberg’s intense tone poem on giant love and Françaix’s wildly entertaining adventures of a lovely giant with former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky as reader and narrator.

After tonight, you'll still be able to join us for all of our Jordan Hall concerts this season for an $8 fee/concert, which goes directly toward keeping this innovative digital concert experience going.  See you in Jordan Hall!  Subscribe to the AFC Newsletter to be the first to hear about all upcoming concerts and live-streamed events.

Gargantua Program Notes

By  Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is arguably one of the most complex figures to appear on the scene of 20th century music, an era that reflected an equally complex world in the midst of massive political and social upheaval. Ideas were very important to Schoenberg and he was equipped to pair his ideas with actions that would change the way music was composed, considered and heard. A prolific writer, his prose illuminates the concepts that fueled his creativity (and are recommended reading to better understand his music, which can sometimes seem cerebral and opaque). In one 1946 essay, New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea, he wrote: 

It is very regrettable that so many contemporary composers care so much about style and so little about idea. From this came such notions as the attempt to compose in the ancient styles, using their mannerisms, limiting oneself to the little that one can thus express and to the insignificance of the music configurations which can be produced with such equipment...no mathematician would invent something new in mathematics just to flatter the masses who do not possess the specific mathematical way of thinking, and in the same manner, no artist, no poet, no philosopher and musician whose thinking occurs in the highest sphere would degenerate into vulgarity in order to comply with a slogan such as ‘Art for All.’ Because if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

This did not mean that he was particularly averse to the music of the past; in fact, he was a proponent of various older composers whom he viewed as being inventors, or evangelists, of their own ideas (his love for Bach and hailing of Brahms as more “the Progressive” than Wagner are good examples).  What he disliked was when ideas became tired and threadbare through overuse. 

Based on Richard Dehmel’s poem, Verklärte Nacht (read this evening in a translation by Mary Whittall), the heart of Schoenberg’s score beats in rhythm with the dialogue in five stanzas. A woman (represented by the viola) and a man (represented by the cello) journey physically and spiritually as individuals and as a couple when they take a moonlit  stroll and she offers her lover the stunning and risky confession that she is pregnant with the child of another man. Illumination in the dark is the metaphorical center of this “Bright night.” This is a work about events and outcomes: the weight of searing guilt and the buoyant balm of mercy. It balances on the razor’s edge between terror and beauty. Abated is a dark night of the soul when, in a transcendent moment her lover reiterates his love and speaks of the baby as his own. Musically Verklärte Nacht is a thread Schoenberg ran through “Impressionism,” Brahms and Wagner, sewing together and transfiguring their elements of symbolism, developing variation, and grand scale. His idea here was to forgo straight programmatic music that sonically describes the action of the poem, and instead depict something more ambiguous: mood. The musical language of Verklärte Nacht has Wagner’s syntax of perpetually sliding key centers, but the delivery seems to strike the ear as more deliberate and clarified. The sentiment of the poem is conveyed but the music evades becoming sentimental. It calls forth the dramatic power of emotion without necessarily exploiting it. 

Inagurating the “How to Cause A Scene” chapter in the Strauss & Stravinsky Riot Playbook, Verklärte Nacht for string sextet had an eventful premiere on March 18, 1902: the audience “hissed and caused riots and fist fights,” as the composer documented. This may mystify us, because for our 21st century ears Verklärte Nacht is romantic and lyrical in comparison to Schoenberg’s later 12-tone works and the sounds of Stockhausen and Varèse. But at the time, the audience was less accustomed to its sound world (for further context, Strauss’ opera Salome, which was greeted with a “riot” came three years after Verklärte Nacht). Fifteen years later, in 1917, Schoenberg expanded its textures for string orchestra, which is now the most frequently performed version. 

Jean Françaix (1912-1997) :: Les Inestimables Chroniques du Bon Géant Gargantua (1971)

Ravel noted to Jean Françaix’s father, a composer, musicologist, pianist and Director of the Le Mans Conservatoire: “Among the child’s gifts I observe above all the most fruitful an artist can possess, that of curiosity: you must not stifle these precious gifts now or ever, or risk letting this young sensibility wither.” Taking the advice to heart, and observing his son’s obvious talents, his father soon had Jean studying composition with the venerable Nadia Boulanger, and by age eighteen he accomplished the thing Ravel never could: winning the premier prix as a pianist at the Paris Conservatoire where he studied with Isidore Philipp. 

“Les Six” was a nickname given to a group of French composers that included Honegger, Milhaud, Tailleferre, Auric, Durey, and Poulenc. Collectively known for their wit, and bright, effervescent writing (a reaction to Wagner’s heavy handed excess and drama) they were praised by Jean Cocteau, the Surrealist artist, who asserted the French should reclaim their own outlook on music, shrugging off the influences of the Russians or the Germans. It was the tradition of “Les Six,” and Poulenc in particular, that Jean Françaix would fold into his own compositional career. In doing so, he carried on the great French knack for neo-classic wit mixed with overt revelry in pleasure for the sake of pleasure, paired with jaunty rhythms barrowed from jazz, and beautiful lyricism, leaving serialism and atonality (his oeuvre has been described as “resolutely tonal”) to his contemporaries. 

Les Inestimables Chroniques du Bon Géant Gargantua is based on an extracted portion of a 16th century satirical novel in five volumes called La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel (The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel) by François Rabelais, which recounts the various events and predicaments the two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, find themselves in. (The composer Frederic Rzewski based his work Les Moutons de Panurge, which AFC performed in their 2014-2015 season, on a different book of the same tale). Françaix said of his adaptation, which comes from the second volume dedicated specifically to stories about Gargantua, “I am not writing a text to follow it, but on the contrary to follow my music, which goes faster and further than the text.” The main body of the Françaix concerns the moment Gargantua’s studies at the Sorbonne are interrupted by a letter from his father, Lord Grandgousier, informing him of a conflict that has broken out with Lord Picrochole whose bakers insulted Grandgousier’s grape-growers. Gargantua comes to help stop the ludicrous bickering that has expanded to a grand scale. In the end he triumphs, and the story is viewed as a moral about the importance of education against the destructive habits of people like Picrochole who will stop at nothing to conquer and win.

©  Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot 

A chat with Robert Pinsky

Embracing my new role as AFC’s blog guy, I was able to steal a few minutes of Robert Pinsky’s time, between our first rehearsal and his cab ride out, to do a quick interview. He’ll be joining us this Friday in Jordan Hall, reciting Richard Dehmel’s “Transfigured Night” and narrating Jean Francaix’s Gargantua, in a new translation by Laura Marris.
 

MU: First off, any thoughts on reading other people’s poetry, versus reading your own. I’m guessing that most of what you end up reading is your own work.

RP: Well, you know, I did a very significant project, in my opinion, the Favorite Poem Project. And if you go to favoritepoem.org you’ll hear a construction worker reading Walt Whitman, you’ll hear a glass blower read a Frank O’Hara poem, a Cambodian-American immigrant in San Jose read a Langston Hughes Poem, “Minstrel Man." It’s not about poets or actors reading poetry, it’s not about performance in the sense of an audience, and it’s not about the instrument of the poet being the poet’s voice. The poet writes with that instrument, but the poet writes for the reader’s voice, so it’s for each reader imagining what’s there. The poem is something that happens… like a piece of music.

MU: It’s a shared experience then, in that way.

RP: Yes, and there’s always a collaboration between the composer, or poet, and the person, perhaps thousands of miles away, perhaps not born yet, whoever that person is who reads the poem and gives voice to the poem.

MU: What do you think, then, of the text we’ve inflicted upon you, Gargantua?

RP: Well I’m interested in comedy and in humanism, and Rabelais was a great humanist and a great scholar. It’s not just about toilet talk; it’s not just about sex or absurdity. When he deflates the jargon-ridden pedants of the Sorbonne, he’s saying something very serious about art and knowledge, and it’s a very cleansing laughter. So, for me, it’s not a stretch at all to admire the Rabelais, and to enjoy reading the Rabelais in Laura Marris’s wonderful translation.

MU: It is wonderful! And as a French speaker myself, having gotten to know both versions, the puzzles she was able to solve were impressive. What can you say about Laura?

RP: She was a student in BU’s very small, very selective MFA program in creative writing. She was my student for two or three years and she helped me with my MOOC, The Order of Poetry. She’s a brilliant young poet, a great teacher. And she knows French very well, she’s written about French culture and poetry.

MU: What are your thoughts about working with musicians? You can be honest.

RP: I’m a frustrated musician. I wanted to be a musician. In my high school graduating class, I was not voted most literate boy, definitely not most successful boy. I was voted most musical boy. My identity was playing the saxophone, and it helped me a lot through difficult years. I would be a professional musician today except for the single obstacle of a deficiency of talent.

MU: Do you have a heroes specific to the saxophone? Musical heroes?

RP: I admire Dexter Gordon very much. I would say if I had to pick one I’d pick Dexter. I was fascinated by the fact that there were Jewish saxophone players: Lee Konitz, Stan Getz on the tenor, Zoot Sims.

MU: We had an awesome experience last year doing Stan Getz’s old album Focus, with Harry Allen.

RP: That's great! You know, I do this too; I have two CDs with Laurence Hobgood, who used to be the music director for Kurt Elling. Our new one is called “House Hour,” it’s from my poems, and I always say I’m a non-singing vocalist. We’ll be at the Regatta Bar next month.

MU: I literally wrote these questions during my lunch break…

RP: You’re doing fine!

MU: but… road trippin’ soundtrack?

RP: Well, driving back from the Cape with two cats complaining a little bit in the back seat, we put on – again reeds – we put on the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, and I had a sense that even the cats calmed down a bit hearing that beautiful music. So, you never know. Another time on that same trip it was Jimmy Scott.

GARGANTUA translation

Enjoy Laura Marris's masterful translation of the GARGANTUA text, commissioned specifically for this performance by A Far Cry. We are having a wonderful time laughing and cringing in all the right and wrong places. 

GARGANTUA