Folias Music

We played music from Waterway for a storytelling bonfire last night.

It was a scene that reminded me of the end of Fahrenheit 451: dusk, a fire builds, people slowly gather, children watch quietly, faces glow around the circle, a man brings his goat…they both listen, mosquitoes…and more mosquitoes, informal passage of time with stories and music…performed by heart under the open sky.

This event is ten years in the making! Hosted now by the Riverside Raconteurs, people gather along the Grand River once a month to revive the art of storytelling, poem reciting and witty anecdote telling.

The night ended with a Nash-Off, a ping-pong recitation around the fire using short verse by Ogden Nash.
Over thirty Nashisms were recited!

Here are some Nashisms your day:

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I’ll never see a tree at all.

Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.

I often wonder which is mine:
Tolerance, or a rubber spine?

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.

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Here is some solid advice I read this morning from jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas that untangles the cultural climate in which musicians, artists, and other creatives are working out their livelihoods.

Dave Douglas: “Niches Brew”: Musicians Creating a Way Forward.

Check out the Greenleaf Music label for some inspiration!

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After a weekend of playing in Madison and in Oshkosh I realize that there are only two things that we really need to keep doing what they are doing: to be appreciated, and to get paid.

The Oshkosh gig was frustrating to say the least:  a breech of contact, a broken car(!) and the humiliation of playing for six people, all of which left us with not even enough money to pay for a six pack of beer at the end of  the night.

Contrasted to that was in Madison where we were not only paid fairly, supported with a critical mass of tango dancers, but given fantastic home stays, good company, and food.

At the end of the week, exhausted and both of us going back to “work”, I understand even more about how to manage a group better and secure performances that are meaningful!

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Today we had a first. Our car broke down on the way to a gig. We were just outside the middle of nowhere in between Milwaukee and our destination Oshkosh, WI where we were set to play at the New Moon Cafe with Debbie and Daniel.

The car just stopped accelerating and then wouldn’t start again.

Luckily we had an angel cop that came and picked us up. He also quickly called a tow for us and then gave us a ride to the local garage that also doubled as a dealership. To top it off, the dealership gave us a rental car after hours that allowed us to make it to our gig only a few minutes late.

What can I say…the life of a musician…is all about recovery.

We’ll see about fixing up the old Folias mobile tomorrow (with 191,000 miles on her), or it may be a new car for us!

Back at the hotel in Jackson, WI now. It’s 2am… we are drinking some local New Glarus “Barely Naked” beer to top off a stressful day.

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It’s 20 minutes till 11pm. Andy and I are finally eating dinner after a long day and we want to make up for some lost practice time. So, we started “Music Nibbles” a short music study session while we eat. We pulled out the score to Berg’s Lyric Suite along with a recording by the Kronos Quartet with Dawn Upshaw.

What Andy learned:

• That Berg’s motivic development is similar to Beethoven’s
• Dawn Upshaw is the best singer in the world and Kronos is awesome, don’t talk trash because they do crossover stuff
• Berg’s scores are meticulously marked

What I learned:

• We don’t play anything even as remotely intricate as any movement of this piece (nice perspective on what I thought was difficult for us).
• I had a similar experience as when I heard Elliot Carter’s works last spring played by the Chicago Symphony. This piece made sense on a audible level. The first movement of Berg’s piece uses a twelve tone row. I used to only understand twelve tones rows as a concept based on pitch content printed on a score, now I am hearing pitch content as a set, and conceptually it doesn’t sound different than if the piece was based on tonal structures. I guess tonal and twelve tone concepts both end up as pitch sets either way…

Alban Berg and Anton Webern

Their height is proportionate to their music? Can you guess who is who?

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