Belong by Washed Out

In a Treeless Place, Only Snow – John Luther Adams
American Contemporary Music Ensemble
Live at (le) Poisson Rouge
March 14th, 2010

Timo Andres – celeste
Nuiko Wadden – harp
Haruka Fujii, Chris Thompson – vibraphones
Caleb Burhans, Yuki Numata – violins
Nadia Sirota – viola
Clarice Jensen – cello

The entire show, including more John Luther Adams and Kevin Volans, is streaming on Q2 here.

This whole post is an excuse to put up a couple recently uncovered drum corps related items. Here’s some context:

Traditions have a way of sticking for years or decades in drum corps, be they emotional or borderline psychotic. For one, there’s a lot of tradition related to the way the corps moves around before and after the show; 128 people need to get from place to place and on/off the field without breaking character. Stay in step in this situation, walk casually focused in that situation, don’t let people break the ranks, don’t run in uniform, hold your hat this way not that way, it can get pretty military-ish (blah). But the post show playoff is a cool moment of charming simplicity. Drumlines have been playing parade-ey cadences for ever and ever (some are so great), but I’m not exactly sure when the post-show playoff became the specific responsibility of the bass drum line. Here is the most famous one, if only because of its weirdly ominous simplicity. But here is the classic Santa Clara Vanguard playoff, which has walked the corps off the field for no less than 35 years straight in one form or another, and is referred to by the line as simply “SCV.”

I wanted to post this because I finally got around to uploading a video I’ve been hanging onto for a while: the 1995 bass line, who loved to grab attention in any way they possibly could (it was a long, difficult summer), used to park in front of the stands and extend that cadence into a little post-show. This is the last half of it:

SCV Bass Drum Line 1995 play “Strange Purple Orangoutans” by Ryan Stohs after an early season show in California.

Apologies about embarrassing over-excited drunk guy superfan. That tends to happen. After that summer I had an inspired moment and wrote a playoff of my own, also set up with the classic “SCV” riff, but for the whole drumline. I’m sure nobody ever saw it. I threw it into a box, which I just discovered the other day, omg 15 years later? Crazy. I remember the feeling of writing drumline music back then; it was so exciting to be creating music of my own (I knew next to nothing at that point about writing for pitched instruments, only drums) but also frustrating because I just had to imagine what it might have sounded like. Because of the time involved in learning music and getting 20 kids to play it well enough to be even just recognizable, there just weren’t opportunities for “readings” back then.

Playoff (1995, after “SCV”)
Chris Thompson

But NOW! My computer is full of tiny magical robots that can read music and also play the drums! So all I have to do is put the notes in to the lefty software Sibelius (also crucial here is Tapspace’s “Virtual Drumline,” sample library, which every composer should know about because in addition to having the only library of realistic marching percussion samples, it also has some of the best orchestral percussion samples as well), and I can hear just what that piece of music would sound like, played by a live drumline. And so can you!

(audio file above! If you are using google reader, you have to click through to listen)

If you want to see how this all works on the score, here it is!

I plan to write more drumline music but need to figure out a possible scenario in which that might be appropriate in my life today. I’m open to suggestions.

a) …have a listen to Daníel Bjarnason on Q2. The full recording of his recent show at LPR is now available streaming on the WQXR website here. Daníel is from Iceland and writes contemplative music that features bowed things, absolutely great use of percussion, and gorgeous orchestration.

For example, here’s my favorite bit of Spindrift; the soloist slips into the background and you get a simple pairing of vibe and clarinet with piano and tuned gongs gently hovering above and below. It’s Orchestration We Can Believe In:

Spindrift – by Daníel Bjarnason (Featuring Vicky Chow, pianist)
And that’s also Alicia Lee playing clarinet and Mike Truesdell playing gongs, who has a recital Friday that you should totally go to! (note: if you are using google reader, there is an audio file above you are not seeing, click through to the post to listen).

b) …check out Alex Ross’ followup post on drum corps/marching bands doing Shostakovich. Apparently there were others who wanted to make sure the Phantom Regiment wasn’t overlooked (and also point out a Shostakovich 5 from the mid-70s I literally had NO IDEA EXISTED. Warning: those 70s bugles are a little intense). I realize I could have definitely been clearer in my post about my main point, which is simply that it isn’t just about Shostakovich; these groups have been doing seriously adventurous repertoire by lots of different 20th century composers since at least the early 90s. For example, the group I marched with’s 2010 show is Bartok’s CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA. !!!  Bring. It. On. dotcom. Alas, there are not videos yet. But here’s their plan.

c) …watch some dudes in haz-mat uniforms play crotales made out of saw blades. I feel this requires no further explanation.

From The Kitchen 3/17/10: I was lingering during sound check; pressed record and happened to catch this quiet, beautiful moment. Had just met some of these guys and really fell in love with their heart and musicianship.
“Breathing Out,” by Doveman: Thomas Bartlett, Sam Amidon, Bryce Dessner, Brian Devendorf, and Oren Bloedow. From the new album.

Alex Ross wrote on Unquiet Thoughts the other day about what he calls the “marching-band Shostakovich underground.” It’s a cool post, and awesome to see some notice of marching music from the greatest living writer on the subject of music. Ross definitely did his research, referencing 13 different videos of high school and college marching bands, but unfortunately still didn’t find the answer to his own question of “when Shostakovich began to catch on with bands across the country.” Also, after all these years he still has the comments turned off, so I’m just going to seize the opportunity to respond in full here and also post some kickass videos. People keep asking me for drum corps 101, so…

Shostakovich 10th Symphony, Scherzo. Phantom Regiment, 2002.

The answer that Ross missed starts with my manifesto: a survey of “marching to Shostakovich” (or “marching to anything” for that matter) that features only high school and college marching bands without any mention of  Drum Corps International (DCI) is like trying to identify the best basketball players in the world without mentioning the NBA.

But I absolutely don’t fault him for not finding it – a google search for “Shostakovich marching band” or even just “Shostakovich marching” brings up nothing related to DCI. Also, drum corps lacks visibility in general and is still a cult phenomenon, known by a very small segment of the population (especially on the east coast, and especially among the classical music community). But that hasn’t kept it from evolving into a high art form in the 30 or so years since it crawled away from it’s military history.

Most of the bands Ross discovered were doing shows derived directly from a handful of highly influential drum corps performances:

Phantom Regiment 2002, featuring parts of the 7th and 10th Symphonies and 2nd piano concerto. Skip right to 1:35 for their badass (and often-imitated) version of that scherzo from the 10th, which I previewed above from the parking lot.

Phantom Regiment 1996, featuring parts of the 1st and 5th Symphonies.

Santa Clara Vanguard 1985, featuring Festive Overture.

In the world of marching music DCI does it first, and inevitably in the next decade or so high schools and college bands imitate. Music companies even sell these shows as package deals to high schools and colleges so that their staffs don’t have to write them (as Ross referenced with the “Fire of Eternal Glory” package). But even those companies aren’t innovating anything, but simply watering down and repackaging the shows created by the pros.

And who are the pros? Obviously there needs to be a creative team of adults to create the content, but what’s amazing about this activity is that the true pros are kids, for a couple of reasons. On the most fundamental level, they are the ones who are actually able to handle the physical stress of it. Check out a vingette about the physical demands on a tenor player:

Second, they are the ones who have nights and weekends all year and entire summers to devote to perfection (and they often pay out of their own pockets to do it). I personally retired from the activity at age 16 but even if someone wanted to continue, everyone is forced to “age out” around age 22. Our average summer in drum corps consisted of camps all weekend until the moment school was out, at which point we started 9 am – 9 pm rehearsals, with usually no more than a day or two off the entire summer. We toured for months on busses, slept on gym floors, rehearsed all day long in some of the hottest places in the country right in the dead of summer and performed at night. It’s simply divine hell on earth.

Back to Shostakovich: Ross referenced another post about the “badassery” dimension of the composer’s music. What does it jump at to prove that point? Of course the famous video of Dudamel doing the Shostakovich 10 scherzo, with the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. It’s natural that an activity full of kids would gravitate toward Shostakovich’s music. Kids do badassery better anyway. Even in orchestras, given the right leadership and guidance, some of the fieriest performances can be given by kids performing works for their first time. Drum corps is that fire and adrenaline multiplied by adding movement.

And how they move:

It is a fact that when these shows are imitated by high schools and colleges, the first thing to get watered down is the movement. It’s impossible, dangerous even, to try to do this stuff without hundreds of hours of rehearsal. The level this activity has reached is astounding, yet the majority of the country doesn’t even know it exists. And Shostakovich isn’t the only difficult 20th century composer they are tackling. Drum corps is where I first learned about John Adams, Philip Glass, Samuel Barber, Bela Bartok, among many others, when I was 14 years old. One might think an attempt at Shostakovich by a marching band is a ballsy cult-like venture if one still thinks the pinnacle of the activity is high school kids waddling around a football field playing Beatles arrangements. But do a quick search for Bartok or Stravinsky at this corps repertoire site. It is quite enlightening to the contrary.

Star of Indiana Rehearsing Barber’s “Medea,” 1993.

Moral of the story: sometimes I reaaaaly want to comment on Alex Ross’ blog. But also, summer is coming! The pros will be in your town soon. If anyone is interested I’ll write lots more on this over the course of the summer.

Just released: DVD & CD live album from the Mono/Wordless Music shows last May. I wrote about those shows here. My ears are still ringing. (in the best possible way…)

Available now at temporaryresidence.com

Kazoos, socks, and almglocken packed; flight cancelled.

Guess I’ll wait this one out.

File under: Things Bartok Said In 1940 That No Longer Apply:

I guess the premier of the Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion didn’t go so well? If only he had Dan Druckman, Jim Baker, Steve Gosling, and Steve Beck back then. This Monday, the foursome play new works for 2 pianos and 2 percussion by Charles Wuorinen, Michael Jarrell, and Rolf Wallin at Merkin Hall. I’m so bummed I can’t go but I figure that if everyone live-texts it to me from the concert I can live vicariously and still revel in the awesomeness. Seriously, this is one not to be missed.

More on the NYNME site.

Dirty Projectors at the Allen Room with Alarm Will Sound 2/19/10. (NYTimes)