Something New Every Day

Things I did not know before tonight:

1. Copland interjected "Fanfare for the Common Man"(which he had written 2-3 years prior) into the last movement of his 3rd Symphony.

2. Jorja Fleezanis left the Minnesota Orchestra. 2 years ago (guess I'm a little behind the times).  For as long as I can remember going to orchestra concerts, she had been the concertmaster - I was actually sad when she didn't come out to tune the orchestra tonight.  :(

The Best Musician You've Probably Never Heard Of

is Peter Mulvey.

I discovered him by accident when I was living in Pennsylvania. I was at a Borders and trying to use one of those music preview machines - I thought it was the kind where you scanned the barcode of a CD you were interested in and it would play what was on it. Turned out to be the kind where there are 5 or 6 featured CDs loaded into the machine and you pick from those what you want to listen to.

So I scanned the CD I was holding and the computer defaulted to the first CD in its memory, Peter's The Knuckleball Suite. And I was like, "This isn't what I scanned but this is really good!" So I bought it instead of what was in my hand.

I told Peter that story tonight at the merch table after his gig at Gingko Coffeehouse, and he gave me a high five. :)

In all seriousness, though - I have yet to hear this man sing a song (original or cover) that I didn't like. His lyrics are smart and funny and profound, and he is one of the most skilled and most versatile guitar players I've ever heard or seen. And his stage banter is hilarious.

Plus, the dude's on a bicycle tour. He rode 70 miles today, then performed an amazing show tonight. Most impressive.

He's touring with Brianna Lane, another excellent musician, and she's local! If you're in the Twin Cities, you've got one day left to see them, at Calhoun Cycle tomorrow afternoon, or The Aster Cafe in Northeast tomorrow night.

Here's a couple youtube vids to demonstrate your need to go!

Shirt


Simon Stimson

Fruitful Prejudices

Let's face it, I'm a good card-carrying progressive, when it comes to most "ists" in my life, I'm trying to actively deconstruct them. I strive to become ever more mindful of the ways that I am racist and classist and elitist, etc, etc, etc, so that I can work on NOT being those things so much as I currently am, so that we can all live in a little bit better world.

However, there are two "ists" in my life of which I am fully aware, completely unashamed, and have no intention of changing, ever.

I am unabashedly statist and unabashedly collegist.

There are a lot of lovely places, filled with a lot of lovely people, all throughout the rest of the world - I have thoroughly enjoyed both visiting and even living in these spectacular places.

But there is no state greater than Minnesota.

Similarly, there are a lot of fine institutions of higher learning in the world - I have a lot of friends who are exemplary graduates of these upstanding schools.

But there is no college greater than St. Olaf.

I mean, where else on this planet would they creatively set the academic expectations to The Sound of Music and enlist professors from multiple disciplines to sing it to you?

Fram, fram, baby.

PA Pictures and Songs

Van Wagner is my favorite Central Susquehanna Valley musician. He's one of the best guitar players I've ever heard, he's a mensch who has both mined coal and logged timber and is now a public educator, and he's steeped in the folk and singer-songwriter traditions, with a beautiful way of telling a story in a song.

He's written a lot of great songs, but I think my favorite is probably "If Time Could Stand Alone" (on the album with the same title), because of the way he sings about living your whole life as a prayer (you can buy it on iTunes).

He's been awfully busy lately, sandbagging, and taking pictures, and writing and recording songs about the flood:





. . .Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers.

The Play So Nice I Saw it Twice

Kristin is about to move to Princeton to start a PhD in Old Testament, so she's making the rounds of her Twin Cities goodbyes this week. We were originally planning to just hang out today around/after lunchtime but then she heard the Guthrie was taping the H.M.S. Pinafore for public television this afternoon and was looking for for an audience to fill the house. So, we did that instead.

And I have to say, I wish to retract my previous criticism of the new orchestration - it totally didn't bother me today. But I could also clearly hear all the words to all the songs today. So either something was off with the balance in the sound system when I went to see this back in June, or I was previously sitting in a dead spot for the speakers (in June I was sitting in the center of the balcony; today we were five rows up from the bottom of the slope).

I also want to reiterate - the whole company and production is fantastic, but Robert O. Berdahl and Christina Baldwin are both especially worthy of a shout out, he for his facial gymnastics (which was a treat to see up close this time), she for her incredible vocal range, both of them for their comedic timing.

It closes on August 28, which means you've got less than a week left to see it, folks. Get thee to the Thrust Stage.

John Moulder Quartet

So the last time ECR and I went on a cultural adventure it turned out to involve computer jazz, which was. . .um. . .interesting.

We ended up leaving after the first song, which also happened to be the first set, which was an hour long (computers don't need to take breaths or breaks the same way real live humans do). We laughed most of the way to the car and, as the adventure had been her idea, she declared she "owed me one."

I can officially say that debt has been forgiven. Last night's cultural adventure completely redeemed the computer jazz experience.

ECR was not in town for this one, but on her recommendation I went to hear the John Moulder Quartet at the Artist's Quarter. It was excellent. This "quartet" is not a standing group, both the pianist and the drummer had done gigs with John before, but this was the first time all 4 of the musicians had ever played together. I would never have known that if they hadn't said it outright - they were tight.

And theological. Moulder is a "jazz priest" (dude, why was that track never made explicit when I was going through MDivland?!) - he is an ordained Catholic priest who also happens to be a professional jazz musician. Inspired by the religious music of the likes of Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck, he's written his own religious jazz setting, called "Trinity." The quartet played parts of it last night, including some delta blues, which Moulder introduced with the comment, "I'm pretty sure the Israelites got the blues."

They also played a piece he wrote called "Being and Time" - he didn't make it explicit in what he said around it, but I couldn't help feeling it was a nod to Heidegger.

So, if you like good jazz and blues, or you like artists with deep theological and philosophical grounding to their work, check John Moulder out. He's a hep cat. :)

Actually, they were all hep cats, so check out Dan Musselman, Alexander Young, and Billy Peterson too.

Also - the Artist's Quarter is a sweet venue - how have I been ignorant of its existence until this weekend?!

Self-Imposed Exile

There are some stores that I should just know better than to go into - if I go into them, I'm not getting out of them without significant damage to my wallet.

The Electric Fetus is such a store.

I went in with three things on my list. Three things because if you buy at least 3 CDs there at once, you get a 10% discount on all of them. Which makes me feel not as bad about buying 3 CDs at once, because I'm saving money. . .erm. . .yeah, that's it, saving money by buying in bulk. . .

I was also hoping they could help me track down something else that I had heard and liked but am having trouble sourcing.

Turned out, they had only one of the three CDs I was looking for, and the guy I spoke with was useless in helping me track the other thing (I'm finding the upside of watching a Glee-esque German telenovela is that it's introducing me to some good new music; the downside is that the stuff I'm not familiar with is European and not so easy to get hold of here in the States).

But if you buy three CDs at Electric Fetus, you get a discount on all of them. And I had one lowly CD in hand.

So, I perused around a little, and found a lot more than 3 CDs I was interested in buying. And some of them were even on sale, at really good prices. And since they are CDs I'm ultimately going to buy anyway, I might as well get a good price on them, right?. . .

The moral of the story, kids, is that I've got a lot of great new music to listen to.

And I'm banishing myself from the Electric Fetus for at least the next six months.

Seriously - friends, public, if you see me in there before 2012 consider this your permission to drag me out of the store, by the ear if necessary.

The Arc of the Universe is Long

. . .but it bends towards justice. -Martin Luther King, Jr

I'll always love you, New York, for many, many reasons - but you can add today's momentous decision to the top of the list.

I think a little celebration is in order - how 'bout some Ryan Adams?

A Rollicking Good Time

I have a neighbor who works for the Guthrie who is awesome and gracious enough to offer this poor student some free tickets every once in a while. This week has been the first time I haven't had a conflicting commitment and could graciously receive their generous offer, which is how I found myself at the H.M.S. Pinafore tonight.

I was not familiar with this work before tonight, but I figured it's Gilbert and Sullivan, you can't go wrong with that. The wit, as expected, is biting and hilarious, the cast is spot on, the set is brilliant, and the choreography is outstanding.

In fact, the only thing I did not like about this production was the orchestration in the pit. For some reason they expanded it to include modern instruments like electric guitar and bass, hammond organ, and trap set, and they altered the accompaniment to some of the pieces (the full company ones in particular) to sound more like late 20th century rock opera instead of early 20th century comic opera. It just didn't sound right, and actually became kind of annoyingly overbearing at some points (when 12 men are mic'ed and singing their hearts out I should have no problem hearing their every word but sometimes the pit overpowered them). There was less of this in the second act, for which I was grateful.

On the whole, a rollicking good time and worth your attention if you're in the Twin Cities.

And, randomly - before the show started I was looking at pictures from past productions that were all along the hallway, and I have to say there were a few faces I was quite surprised to see, I had no idea they had ever done a production at the Guthrie - these included William H. Macy, David Canary, Don Cheadle, and Kristin Chenoweth. Goes to show you learn something new every day.

Dueling Hosts

Because the extent of my geekiness is not limited to Lutheranism and Star Wars:

The Stone Marimba

This is just cool. Many thanks to Chris and Eileen for introducing me to the music of Jonsi and Sigur Ros this year.



Happy Saturday!

My Friend Tim is a Creative Genius

Just look at this beautiful video he made of the beautiful graduation blessing ritual that he also created.

He, Eileen, and I did a dry run with one of those lanterns back in January, to see how they worked and what it would look like on video. It was only after we had released the lantern into the sky that we thought to ourselves, "Uh. . .surely that fire is going to go out before it lands anywhere, right?" No reports of fire falling from the sky later that night or the next morning, so we figured they were safe. :)

Currently trying not to be too jealous that he is this very moment celebrating graduation in Kansas City listening to this:



but grateful he brought good MN mojo to KC - Pavano finally got his 100th career win down there tonight.

Mother Tongues and Other Tongues

So Holy Week Burkhard was in Chicago for a conference, then came north to spend the Easter holiday and following week on vacation in Minnesota.

We basically spoke English with each other while he was here. He would graciously say that's because his English needs more practice than my German. I would disagree with that assessment and chalk it up instead to my perfectionist tendencies creating high anxiety about all the grammatical mistakes I know will come out of my mouth if I try to speak auf Deutsch.

Both of us have a similar issue in that we each understand 80-90% of what we hear or read, but trying to actively come up with the right vocabulary and verb conjugations and grammatical constructs as we're speaking on the fly is hard. Especially since neither of us wants to speak "See Spot Run" versions of our non-native language - we each have complex thoughts and we want to express them as fully in other languages as we can in our mother tongue.

Sprachen geht mir schon viel besser, I've noticed, when I'm immersed in the language, like 3 years ago when I was in Dresden for Adri and Burkhard's wedding (btw, Happy Anniversary yous twos!), I was surprised by how much grammer and vocab came back to me, and how quickly my speaking abilities improved, once I got into town.

With that in mind, I've decided I just need to be more intentional about keeping German in my ears on a regular basis, so I've been trolling the internet for irgendetwas auf Deutsch that I could use toward that end. And I found this:



I knew Germans translated and dubbed over American movies, I had no idea they also translated Broadway plays! Some of the wordplay of the English is lost in translation (e.g. the chorus of "For Good" roughly translates "Because we've known each other, I am who I am today," which loses the double-entendre of good in the English verse: "Who can say if I've been changed for the better, but because I knew you I have been changed for good"), but on the whole they get the same meaning across with the same meter and rhyme schemes, in a completely different language. Most impressive.

Of Principles and Particulars

Last night I was at the Festival of Nations, which I haven't been to in years. It was a lot of fun - ate a lot of good food, did a little shopping in the international bazaar, watched plenty of wonderful dancing.

They would project a picture from the representative country on a screen behind and above each group as they danced. Many pictures were rather nondescript scenes of nature or of houses typical of that country, so that even if you'd been to the country you couldn't really say "Oh, that's __________."

Except for the German picture, which was unmistakably Dresden:



Which was cool but a little odd considering Dresden is in Saxony and the dancers were all dressed in traditional Bavarian costumes and were dancing traditional Bavarian folk dances.

It'd be like the Preservation Hall Jazz Band touring in a different country and having a picture of the Minneapolis skyline projected above them as they performed. In principle, same country. In particular, different regional customs and traditions.

Probably stood out to me more than usual because I'm wrapping up a semester in which we've done a lot of thinking about the importance of hearing the other into free speech and paying attention to their complex particularities, not painting people or congregations in overly broad strokes.

It's Not the Heat, It's the Humidity

Ok, at this point it would require an absolute freak move on Mother Nature's part to snow us out, so I think I'm safe announcing this (our most recent attempts at performing and recording were cancelled due to Hoth-like conditions, not merely once but twice - we were starting to develop a complex).

InVocation concerts this weekend and next. A couple madrigals, some global music, pops - a little something for everyone in this program! See you there!

Subversive Transfigurative Theology

I did a double-header of worship today, participated in my own congregation this morning, then over to the House of Mercy in the afternoon, where Debbie Blue preached this brilliant sermon that openly wrestled with and steadily deconstructed sacrificial notions of atonement.

The sermon powerfully transitioned right into the Supper, during which the band quietly played "The Old Rugged Cross" as everyone came forward for communion. They didn't sing the words, they just played the music, but it was obvious what they were playing and it felt very jarring to me at the time, because I usually think of "The Old Rugged Cross" as a hymn steeped in sacrificial atonement theory, so as I'm walking forward I'm thinking "What the. . .? She just picked this kind of stuff apart, why are they playing this song?"

I've been - consciously and unconsciously - stewing over it the rest of the evening. Finally, I looked up the words to the hymn, intent on analyzing them in more depth, and realized there's actually nothing directly about sacrifice in the lyrics, that was something I had been reading into them all these years (which was part of Debbie's point, that we are so steeped in notions of sacrifice that we read it into things we shouldn't and set it up as an ultimate frame, when maybe it's not the best frame to be using, and maybe it's not the direction God would have us go). It was a total creeper move, took me several hours of ongoing wrestling with the sermon and the music to get there, but the sermon has actually transfigured my hearing of the hymn. . .

Such is the House of Mercy, and welcome to it.

Small World (Flaketown Division)

I've decided Eileen Campbell-Reed needs to come to town more often, because I do way more fun cultural stuff when she's here.

So tonight ECR, Tim K. Snyder, and myself went to the Black Dog to hear a jazz trio, one member of which (Nathan Hanson) is a friend of ECR's.

As we were waiting for them to start, Eileen told a story of how she and Chris made a small-world connection of their own a couple years ago, as they realized Eileen's friend Nathan is the brother of one of Chris' best friends from seminary.

During the set break Nathan came over to talk to us. Some other friends of his had to leave so they came over to say goodbye, then they turned and looked at me and said "You're from Forest Lake, right?" and they knew who I was and pronounced my name correctly. I did not recognize them so I was like, "Yeeaahh. . .are you guys from Forest Lake?" And as soon as they told me their names I knew who they were (in fairness to not recognizing them by sight: he's grown a beard and she is hugely pregnant, which is not how I knew either of them in high school).

After they left it turned out Nathan had a connection to Flaketown as well - he's taught off and on at the Music Connection over the past twenty years, knows all my old band directors.

It's a crazy small world after all. . .

How to Have Fun When It's F-F-F-Freakin Cold

Dinner at Solera.

Followed by Nellie McKay and the Aristocrats at the dakota.

Happy Birthday to the fabulous Eileen Campbell-Reed, whose natal day was Tuesday and provided the impetus for this night on the town.

Happy Birthday to the marvelous Mary Hess, whose natal day was actually today (I'm still counting this as Friday, I haven't gone to bed yet).

And props to the person I passed on my way home who was out riding a bike, at midnight, when it is 4 degrees and actively snowing. You are either really stupid or really hard core. Normally I'd think you were a candidate for the Darwin awards, but I'm feeling benevolent after a good concert, so I'm gonna go with hard core and tip my Turtle Fur hat to you, good sir or madame (hard to tell the difference these days when everybody is bundled up the wazoo).

Now, for your viewing enjoyment, a little Nellie McKay:

Happy Hannukah!

Because that's what every good Jew wants for their Hannukah dinner, a big fat slice of ham. Ah Wal-Mart, thanks for your corporate sensitivity and your enlightenment of the American public. . . not. Epic fail.


Now here are some dudes who know what they're talking about. Hat tip to Mary for bringing it to my attention. Happy Hannukah to my Jewish brothers and sisters!

Support Your Local Musicians

InVocation concerts this weekend and next.