Tina Guo, the exciting and accomplished cellist and erhu player, turned up in New York this week.  Her first love as well as her first training was in  the classical realm but Guo’s playing evinces an enthusiasm for music across a wide array of genres.  The Shanghai born, California raised and based artist has shared stages with Carrie Underwood, Carlos Santana, The Foo Fighters, Al Di Meola, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Stevie Wonder and countless others.  Her credits in film and television are extensive with contributions to Batman v. Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Iron Man 2,  and Clash of the Titans as well as American Dad, Family Guy, and dozens more.  She’s got a taste for Metallica, Slayer and Pantera as she showed by recording music from each on her Cello Metal album a couple of years ago.

I first saw Guo on stage at Carnegie Hall last year performing with guitarist Joe Bonamassa and had been looking for a chance to see her again which came this past Tuesday, March 28th 2016, at a nifty venue on the Lower East Side called The Box.  We chatted before she played four songs from her new album Game On! which was produced by her friend Hans Zimmer – the prolific composer who seems a natural ally of Guo as they both show an affinity for combining classical music with elements from other genres, especially electronic ones in his case.  Game On! was recorded at Zimmer’s Remote Control Studios in Santa Monica and features the Budapest Symphony Orchestra on four songs.  The material selected for this album gives Guo opportunities for atmospheric accompaniment as well as swelling, anthemic soundscapes featuring grand musical gestures.  She excels in both but on stage, to the delight of the audience, the latter was emphasized.

The track-list for Game On! is as follows: 

The Legend of Zelda
Final Fantasy VII
Chrono Trigger
World of Warcraft
Skyrim
Uncharted: Nate’s Theme
Super Mario Bros.
Pokémon
Journey
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Halo
Metal Gear Solid
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: Main Titles
Tetris

A tremendous lineup headed by Patti Smith and Iggy Pop has been unveiled for this year’s Tibet House benefit concert happening Thursday, March 16th at Carnegie Hall.  Laurie Anderson, Alabama Shakes, and Sufjan Stevens as well as Bernard Sumner, Phil Cunningham, and Tom Chapman of New Order will all perform along with Philip Glass who – besides being a brilliant composer – has been a pillar of Tibet House since its inception.  If you click on that last link you can see how many cool movies like The Hours, Kundun, Dracula and Hamburger Hill that Glass has written scores for as well as what’s brewing for his 80th birthday concert season. Among the offerings of the octogenary celebration is an appealing opportunity to see and hear members of the Philip Glass Ensemble offering a live interpretation of the music he composed for Jean Cocteau’s film La Belle et la Bête at Town Hall.

The beneficiary of the benefit concert, Tibet House US, is located at 22 West 15th Street and include… a gallery, exhibition space, and the spiffy room where Glass generously sat down with me last year to speak about the event and its reason for being.  As the interview with Glass took place not many weeks after the death of David Bowie, I’ve included a bonus video here as his remarks about him are worth sharing.  His relationship with Bowie was such that he based symphonies on two of the albums –Heroes and Low –that Bowie made with Brian Eno in the Berlin trilogy.  In addition, to which he alludes, he crossed paths with him quite a bit in the first few years of the century when Bowie recorded at Looking Glass Studios in Soho.  Glass reveals he may yet complete a symphony for Lodger to complete the trilogy with Heroes and Low…

Kronos Quartet Champions Humanity, Understanding Across Cultures – February 15, 2017

The Kronos Quartet are and have always been modern and progressive in the sense that they favor new music as opposed to playing works by composers like Haydn or Mozart who did their thing hundreds of years ago.  Now with almost four and a half decades in the illustrious group‘s rearview mirror, they’re engaged in perhaps their most ambitious project yet.  They are commissioning 50 new works over a 5 year period in an initiative dubbed Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire.  The 50 pieces are being created with an eye towards teaching young musicians and giving them the tools to evolve into members of tomorrow’s great string quartets.   Fifty for the Future is part of Carnegie Hall’s broader 125 Commissions Project that’s enlisting both eminent and emerging composers.  

David Harrington hatched the idea for his group in ’73 when, as he told me before the show last Saturday at Zankel Hall, it seemed like society was falling apart with the draft in effect and protest raging against the war in Vietnam.  He had started playing violin at age 9 and string quartets at 12 while attending public schools in Seattle but didn’t know if music was what he really wanted to focus on.  However, upon hearing George Crumb’s Black Angels (David Bowie was among its admirers) on the radio, he was moved to the extent of forming a string quartet who could play it.

Needless to say it feels like society is falling apart these days as well and Trump’s immigration ban has cast a dark shadow on the idea of America. Traditionally, perhaps, the idea of protest music is the folk model where the message is carried in the lyrics.  The way the Kronos Quartet is showing their support for the people banned by Trump may be even more powerful.  Hearing the emotion, the beauty, and the humanity of artists from the banned countries gets to the heart of the matter directly.  

Here’s the program from their performance at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall last Saturday and a pair of embedded videos offering more details about the commissions projects…

GARTH KNOX “Dimensions” from Satellites (co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
KALA RAMNATH Amrit (arr. Reena Esmail, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
NICOLE LIZÉE Another Living Soul (co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
FODÉ LASSANA DIABATÉ Sunjata’s Time (arr. Jacob Garchik; co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
– intermission –
MARK APPLEBAUM Darmstadt Kindergarten (NY Premiere)
TANYA TAGAQ Sivunittinni (arr. Jacob Garchik; co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
RHIANNON GIDDENS At the Purchaser’s Option with variations (World Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
STEVE REICH Triple Quartet

Final notes: As I was packing up my camera after the interview, Harrington shared this fun fact that I don’t think he will mind my passing on.  While walking out for a performance with the Kronos Quartet  in ’94 for a performance of Howl, Allen Ginsburg said I can’t wait to say ‘cocksucker’ on stage at Carnegie Hall!  Ginsburg is among a staggering list of artists who have shared the stage or studio with the Kronos Quartet over the years including Bowie, Metheny, McCartney, Reznor, Waits, Dessner, Bjork, and (of course) Reich and Glass.  They’ve covered Hendrix, Dylan, and…my fave Television’s Marquee Moon.

London Haydn Quartet Share Music Of Composer They Love – At The Morgan Library and Museum 1-12-17

It was a great opportunity to hear beautiful music under ideal conditions when The London Haydn Quartet took the stage in the concert hall at The Morgan Library and Museum on Thursday.  The LHQ have essentially devoted their lives to exquisitely playing the works of Joseph Haydn who invented the whole idea of a string quartet in the 1750s and whose compositions remain the standard for its enthusiasts.  They use period instruments and gut strings which Manson revealed open different avenues of interpretation (compared with modern ones and synthetic strings) due to their increased resistance and texture.

Catherine Manson, along with her brother Jonathan on violoncello as well as Michael Gurevich on violin and John Crockatt on viola offered a program dubbed Verve, Veritas, and Virtuosity anchored by Haydn’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No.2.  Manson explained when we spoke in the library before the show that after a period of playing their main man exclusively, other giants of the form began to knock on their door and insist they be included.  In this case it was Beethoven whose String Quartet in G Major, Op 18, No.2 was given a workout and Weber whose Clarinet Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 34 was interpreted along with longtime LHQ ally Eric Hoeprich on clarinet.

The London part of the quartet’s name refers to a period that Haydn spent there in the 1790s as well as being something of a home hub for them. The Manson siblings however hail from Scotland while Gurevich is Dutch making Crockatt the lone Englishman.  They have recorded half a dozen 2 CD sets of Haydn works (containing 4 quartets in each set) on the Hyperion label with the latest one, OPP 54 & 55, due for release in February.  

The performance on Thursday was presented by The Morgan with the Boston Early Music Festival.  The BEMF has been a champion of chamber music since the 80s.

Gift Ideas: Reich, Jarrett, Elvis, Queen, Depeche Mode & Otis – December 13, 2016

Countdown to Santa’s arrival is a mere twelve days!  Here’s a grab bag of goodies across genres to stimulate your giving gland…

The ECM Recordings from Steve Reich offers a kind of Reich 101 course in the form of the most essential material, remastered of course, from the giant of minimalism.  The set is well-timed as his 80th birthday two months ago and his selection as the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall for the 216-2017 season has stimulated interest in his work.  That’s hardly to suggest interest was waning, he has only grown in stature since Music For 18 Musicians hit in 1978.  This three disc includes that masterpiece alongside 1980’s Violin Phase/Music For A Large Ensemble/Octet as well as 1982’s Tehillim plus the original essays written by the composer upon the release of each.

Keith Jarrett’s A Multitude Of Angels also provides illuminating liner notes (newly penned) from the artist himself to accompany the stunning collection of music contained on the four CDs.  These 1996 concerts came at a difficult time personally for the Allentown, PA born artist who, at that point, had already been an important pianist across jazz and classical lines for three decades.  The performances are all the more remarkable knowing that he was suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which would keep him away from playing for the next two years.

The video collection is a no-brainer for fans of Depeche Mode with an impressive roster of directors allowing their disparate imaginations and visual sensibilities to complement, comment on, and amplify the songs of Gahan, Gore, and Fletcher.  

Queen Greatest Hits, The Wonder Of You by Elvis Presley with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Otis Redding’s Live at the Whisky A Go Go are all available on vinyl.  Whereas the Queen collection of course is for the entry level appreciator of Freddie and the fellas, the Presley and Redding sets are aimed at the fan that wants to get somewhere they haven’t been before with the considerable material that’s already available from the the king and the big O.

Danish String Quartet Makes Carnegie Hall Debut; At Zankel Hall on 10-26-16

Almost twenty years ago, three thirteen (or maybe fourteen) year old musicians became friends and began to play together.  A professor (who is still a mentor) Tim Frederiksen at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen took interest in them a year or two after that and they became a proper group.  These three who are increasingly known around the world as members of the Danish String Quartet are: Rune Tonsgaard Sorensen on violin, Frederik Oland on violin, and Asbjorn Norgaard on viola.  The fourth member of the group is actually a Norwegian.  He is Fredrik Schoyen Sjolin on violincello who joined the group about a decade into its existence in 2008.

I met them on the afternoon of their performance for a chat in the venue’s research room.  Although they had already had a number of New York City gigs under their belt including ones at Lincoln Center, they were thrilled to be at Carnegie Hall so it was a great moment to document.  The DSQ spoke about how the two compositions that would make up the evening’s program were written late in the composers’ lives; both practically on their death beds.  Shostakovich’s last quartet, his No. 15 in E-Flat Minor as well as Schubert’s last quartet in C Major have a sense of mortality to them but both, as the gentlemen pointed out, contain light that complements and deepens the meaning of their dark elements.  The former is what they were playing when the on-stage video was being shot and on the latter they were joined by cellist Torleif Thedeen.

In contrast to the lasts of the concert, the DSQ tackled three firsts on their recent album in the ECM New series representing three living composers of different generations.  Two works by fellow Danes: Per Norgard (1932) and Hans Abrahamsen (1952) and, one by Thosmas Ades (1971) from England.  

The Danish String Quartet, you should know, enjoy a good beer.  The only disappointment of the encounter was my inability to secure any of the pale ale the group introduced at the first in their Series of Four concerts in Copenhagen last month! 

I stumbled upon Black Violin at SXSW last year and have been a fan ever since. The mad instrumentation of two fiddles, a drummer, and a turntablist creates a unique template on which to build songs. Hip hop and classical music are the genres most easily identified when sampling BV but they are adept at seamlessly incorporating elements from across the musical spectrum.

Kev Marcus who playes violin and Wil B who playes viola, both grew up in Florida and met in high school. Their musical partnership began to bear fruit as far back as eleven years ago when they won the Showtime At The Apollo competition. They recorded a self-titled album in 2008 followed with Classically Trained in 2012 and Stereotypes last year.

Black Violin will return to New York City on Saturday to open the fall season of festivities at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College.

“Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music. Music is the best.” – Frank Zappa (From Packard Goose off Joe’s Garage, Act III)

Few artists are as worthy of a documentary film as Frank Zappa. His musicianship; including his composing, his talents as a band leader, and his guitar work, were the stuff of genius. His treatment of hypocrites and posers was uncompromising. His social criticism – biting, and often hilarious, ran through his body of work as a through line. The new Frank Zappa Documentary: Eat That Question gives insight into the fascinating character whose standing in the rock, classical, and even jazz and political worlds has only grown since his death in 1993 at age 52.

Maybe the most amazing thing about him was how he cultivated his bands’ ability to play music in unpredictable ways. As he explained in The Real Frank Zappa Book, he’d use hand signals on stage to communicate dramatic stylistic shifts from whatever the band was doing into reggae or ska or heavy metal. Beyond that, he used what he referred to as ‘stock modules’ or ‘archetypal American musical icons’ such as The Twilight Zone, Jaws, and Mr. Rodgers to create musical humor and put some lyrics, as he put it, in parentheses.

FZ standing toe to toe with the Washington wives of the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) is not only one of my favorite moments of Eat That Question but one of my teenaged self’s favorite moments. I was sixteen when Zappa so eloquently characterized the group’s scheme to put warning labels on albums as “an ill-conceived piece of nonsense that infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretation and enforcement problems inherent in the proposal’s design.” His analysis of the whole circus was razor sharp. He called out not just the PMRC but the RIAA (whose priority was getting a blank tape tax) and the politicians who unethically gave their wives’ sham organization a legislative fast track. He became a hero to me at that point and I hadn’t even yet heard Apostrophe or Shut Up ‘n Play Your Guitar.

This documentary, culled from archival materials, gives insight into Zappa by stringing together a string of interviews he did throughout the course of his life from his 1963 appearance on The Steve Allen Show to his 1990 meeting with Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel. Eat That Question was directed by Thorsten Schutte whose credits include 2003’s I Was The King Of Porn…The Adventurous Life Of Lasse Braun. Schutte spoke to me at the NY1 studios in Chelsea along with Frank’s first born child Moon Zappa. Moon was born in NYC during Frank and his wife Gail’s period living in Greenwich Village between ’66 and ’68 and immortalized herself on the song Valley Girl in 1982. She is an actress and author.

The flick opens Friday at Film Forum.

Soprano Ying Fang Shines At Juilliard’s Vocal Arts Recital on May 9, 2016

Last Monday on the Upper West Side was a great chance to savor the beauty of the human voice – the right human voice that is as projected by one Ying Fang. It’s amazing to see somebody like Tony Bennett when he puts the microphone down and fills a hall without amplification. It’s easy to forget that classical singers, not even when they need to rise over an orchestra, never use microphones. How punk rock!

Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall was the venue for the 18th annual Vocal Arts Recital starring Ying Fang accompanied by Brian Zeger on piano who is the artistic director of Juilliard’s Marcus Institute for vocal arts as well as executive director of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Fang is a member of that program but, as Zeger made plain when we chatted, even though he remains a mentor to her, their collaboration on stage was very much of two artists, two colleagues, as opposed to a teacher and pupil.

Ying Fang certainly is accomplished. She won acclaim in her native China (Ningbo is her hometown) and a degree from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music before studying at Juilliard where she’s earned a masters as well as an Artist Diploma in Opera Studies. She has been appearing internationally and in Metropolitan Opera productions for the last few seasons and her 2016 is shaping up to be on the epic side with her first opera singing in Czech and more roles with The Met and her debut planned with The New York Philharmonic.

Brian Zeger has played with a prodigious array of great singers from Susan Graham to Marilyn Horne. He records for the Delos label and is putting the finishing touches on an album with mezzo-soprano Jaimie Barton (who if you’ll forgive an aside, reportedly sports a nose ring… speaking of punk rock) to be released this fall. Ying will be part of The American Ballet Theater Gala tonight!

Iggy Pop Will Spearhead Tibet House Benefit Concert; Philip Glass Interview

A tremendous lineup headed by Iggy Pop has been unveiled for this year’s Tibet House benefit concert happening Monday, February 22nd at Carnegie Hall.  FKA twigs, Sharon Jones, Basia Bulat and Dechen Shak-Dagsay with Helge van Dyk will all perform as well along with Philip Glass who – besides being a brilliant composer – has been a pillar of Tibet House since its inception. who generously sat down with me last week to speak about the event and its reason for being.  Even though Patti Smith can’t make it this year, her band will be on hand so, as seen in some of the video that I shot 2 years ago, Iggy and Lenny Kaye may share the stage again.

In addition to all the other great features of the Tibet House benefit concert, a tribute to David Bowie seems like a natural this year as both Philip Glass and Iggy Pop worked with him intimately.

I’ve included a bonus video here because Philip spoke about David Bowie.  He not only based symphonies on two of the albums that Bowie made with Eno but, as he alludes to, he crossed paths with him quite a bit in the first few years of the century when Bowie recorded at Looking Glass Studios in Soho.  Glass even reveals he may yet complete a symphony for Lodger as well as Heroes and Low!