John Ryan's blog
Submitted by John Ryan on Fri, 06/15/2007 - 5:22pm.
I can't help it, the song comes to me every year at this time (it goes to the tune "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead").
Every season has this glorious five minutes - the concerts are done, the final payroll is in the mail, the music is back in the library, the phone is strangely silent and the files are put away.
It's a great feeling.
For five minutes.
Then the cycle starts all over again - ordering music for next season, building concert rosters, creating rehearsal schedules, working on budgets and the million and one things that go into a (hopefully) smooth season.
But this is my five minutes, so I think I'll slip over to Millenium Park, lay down on the grass and enjoy a concert.
And relish the fact that it's not mine.
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
Submitted by John Ryan on Thu, 04/05/2007 - 4:08pm.
We met last night to discuss Golijov's opera Ainadamar. It was a great discussion and we set our next meeting and chose repertoire.
Tuesday May 1st at 7:00pm. We'll be discussing George Antheil's Symphony No. 5 "Joyous" and a couple choral works by Eric Whitacre: Sleep and Water Night.
The Antheil is available on eMusic. The Whitacre is available on itunes.
More later, but mark your calendars now.
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
Submitted by John Ryan on Fri, 03/23/2007 - 11:56am.
Mouse over to Outlook and mark down Wednesday April 4th from 7:00 - 8:00pm. It's the next meeting of our listening group and this time - at a more chat-friendly time - we'll be talking about Golijov's opera Ainadamar.
If the first thing you thought was "OMG, I don't want to listen to hours and hours of music." I hear you, but this one is an hour 20 minutes. Start to finish.
If the second thing you thought was "Golijov, must be modern. I pass." Give it a listen, you'll hear amazing singing, haunting orchestral colors, and a flamengo dance of bullets.
A recording by the Atlanta Symphony is available on itunes and includes 2 nifty new things. 1st, a booklet is downloaded as well. You can open it in Word. 2nd, there is a listening guide narrated by Osvaldo Golijov. That in itself is worth the download.
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
Submitted by John Ryan on Tue, 02/13/2007 - 11:37am.
Here's the listening list for March 2nd.
There is lots of Gesualdo to listen to. I picked these because they are performed on a VERY interesting documentary by Werner Herzog called Gesualdo: Death in Five Voices. You can rent this from Netflix. It's one hour long and bizarre like...we can talk about it on the 2nd.
Carlo Gesualdo - Five part madrigals
Book 4 #3 Io tacero..."
I found 2 versions on itunes, one is performed by Claudio Cavina & La Venexiana, the other by Ensemble Arte-Musica.
Book 6 #17 "Moro lasso..."
On itunes, this is represented by Canadian Brass and The King's Noyse. I recommend listening to both.
Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday: III. Plange quasi virgo
Ingram Marshall - Fog Tropes
If you're looking on itunes, search under "Ingram Marshall (b. 1942) Fog Tropes (LP version). It's on a CD called American Elegies.
Also available is Fog Tropes II for the Kronos Quartet. If you can, listen to both and we'll talk about them.
Remember, no experience necessary, no need to buy scores or have a music degree, just a desire to listen and talk. We'll meet in the chat room on Friday March 2 at 10:00am (CST).
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
Submitted by John Ryan on Fri, 02/02/2007 - 10:39am.
A brief post after a long delay.
First, for a humorous prelude to our concert tonight, I recommend, thanks to YouTube, watching Peter Ustinov perform (alone) a Bach cantata movement.
Next, I've been remiss in posting the date, time and repertoire for our next online listening group. I propose Friday March 2nd at 10:00 (CST). Repertoire is Fog Tropes by Ingram Marshall and a few madrigals by Gesualdo.
Remember, you don't need to study scores or have a music degree, just listen and chat about it.
I will post the titles of the madrigals on Monday or Tuesday next week. In the meantime, I highly recommend getting the documentary about Gesualdo by Werner Herzog. It's called Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices. One hour long. Available from Netflix. And as bizarre and surreal as they come. My favorite line came from the fleeing woman who turns out to look like a voluptuous movie star and claims to be Gesualdo's murdered wife. Then says that she lives in a box at La Scala and can be reached by helicopter.
You've got to see it.
The listening list will come mostly from the documentary (I have to watch it again to write down the madrigals performed.)
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
Submitted by John Ryan on Thu, 12/28/2006 - 8:24am.
"We" as in the Listening Group.
For the next on-line meeting we are listening to Bartok's Contrasts and Theofanidis' The Here and Now.
Interesting choice of works... the Bartok is small, written for piano, violin and clarinet - it was written for Benny Goodman!
By contrast, the Theofanidis is big - written for the Atlanta Symphony chorus and orchestra. I just received a CD from Amazon and will listen to it for the first time this weekend.
The next meeting will be on Friday January 12, 2007 - next year is right around the corner!
Put the date on your calendar and start your ipods, CD players, MP3s. The recordings are available on iTunes and, of course, Amazon. Remember, there are no rules to be a part of the group - you don't need to own the scores, read music or hold a degree of any sort.
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
Submitted by John Ryan on Fri, 12/01/2006 - 12:27pm.
I was at the CSO's performance of Mahler's 3rd symphony in October and his 7th symphony after Thanksgiving. I didn't know the works when I showed up to the concerts. While I mostly enjoyed the performances, I found myself drifting off more than usual.
During one drift-off I wished that there was a listening group, much like a book group, so I would have an excuse to get to know a work, then hear what other people liked and disliked about the works and performances.
So I'd like to invite readers to join me in an online listening group.
At first I thought it might be just a recording, then I thought that in a town like Chicago, we might want to hear the work live. THEN I thought that we might have readers from other cities and countries. So perhaps a recording could be a starting point. We'll see.
Anyone game? No experience necessary.
If you're interested, meet me in the chat room next Friday (Dec 8th) at 10:00am. Come with an idea of a work you'd like to listen to. We'll also choose a time to meet in the chat room to talk about it.
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
Submitted by John Ryan on Fri, 11/10/2006 - 3:59pm.
I've gone to two concerts recently, Joan Baez and a symphonic concert. As usual, I went to dinner before each concert, which usually involves a couple glasses of wine. When I got to my symphonic seat, the music began and after a few minutes I.., I..., I fell asleep.
This wasn't the first time. I mean, I try to stay awake, but the lights go down, it's warm, the music is soothing.... What can I do? (yeah, yeah, I should probably abstain before a concert.) I'm always alert for the second half, but so often I'm in and out at the top.
When I took my Joan Baez seat, the lights went down, the sold out house was indeed warm, the music was relaxing... and I stayed awake! I didn't try to stay awake, I just did.
My wife observed that with Joan Baez each song was 3 or 4 minutes long, there was light excercise (clapping), and a brief story to introduce each song. Even though it was a pretty low energy concert, it kept my attention from the beginning.
Which got me to thinking that a concert's format may have a lot to do with keeping a listener's attention. Or not.
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
Submitted by John Ryan on Fri, 10/13/2006 - 10:55am.
My part of today's blog is very short. It's three places I visit regularly along with the four websites that turned me on to these gems.
I'm pretty sure I first read about the first item on Greg Sandow's blog. It's an amazing video of a cadenza for Mozart's 3rd violin concerto performed by Gilles Apap.
I read about the next video on Marc Geelhoed's blog, Deceptively Simple (who in turn found it on Drew McManus's blog, Adaptistration). It is a short Western featuring brass instruments. Great fun. (But have patience, the video takes a while to load.)
And finally, through Alex Ross's blog, The Rest Is Noise, I discovered a site to buy new and used scores.
Enjoy.
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
Submitted by John Ryan on Fri, 09/29/2006 - 4:02pm.
In his Tuesday blog, Steve Burns posed an interesting question - what do we call classical music? As I was reading it, I was really hoping that it would die.
Why? Because I like to drink.
If you've spent even a little time buying or reading about wine, you know that Champagne is a region in France. And only sparkling wine made in Champagne can properly be called champagne. If the bubbly is made in California, Spain, or anyplace else, isn't really "champagne," it's sparkling wine.
I know that at least one reason for this was that producers in Champagne didn't want everybody ripping off their name. I get that. But now we've lost a perfectly good generic term. If you're at a restaurant and ask for a couple glasses of champagne, a waiter might decide to educate you and explain that they don't have "champagne" by the glass, but they serve an excellent spakling wine from blah, blah, blah by the glass.
When this happens I always think "Ah shit! Now he's pegged me as a hick and will want to help me with every word bigger than "gravy".
I like generic terms. I like to ask where the kleenex is rather than asking where the facial tissue is.
I don't think we need another word for it. The only thing I don't like about "classical music" is that by saying you like it, people pretty much assume that you must not like anything else.
Now THAT is a problem.
Click here to continue reading
Posted in
