You should be listening to records, man

A member of the Jazz Royal Family, Branford Marsalis, spent a couple days on campus leading rehearsals, conducting master classes and generally whipping the school's Jazz Studies students into shape. I accompanied some jazz fans to a master class and witnessed Mr. Marsalis mercilessly pushing his pupils to see beyond the traditional tenants of jazz and music instruction and become thoughtful, intuitive artists.

Here are a few pearls of wisdom from his session with 8 young saxophonists:

• If you use a double embouchure, you will bite through your lips.
• Songs are not vehicles for soloing. Pay attention to melodies.
• Understand what a song is saying and then craft your solo using the same sentiment.
• In general, learn more solos. Transcribe music from the 30s and 40s.
• Flawless technique is not artistry.

One of the students played a snippet of 'Round Midnight that was particularly beautiful. His played with dynamics in a really creative way, which Mr. Marsalis praised. "Thats a very hip instinct," he remarked.

'Round Midnight - Charlie Park...

image via www.cs.cornell.edu

New Dances/ Edition 2009

Choreographers Larry Keigwin and Andrea Miller previewed their work this week. Andrea's work was inspired by a recent stint in Israel, where she was deeply moved by the mandatory military experience. Her selections were manic and aggressive; people in the front row were scared they would be plowed over by the vehement choreography.

Where Andrea's work was spontaneous and bombastic, Larry's work was controlled and collaborative. He worked with older dance students, and the pieces we observed were full their mature, controlled voices.


images via www.citydance.net and www.nypress.com

Noble Attitude and Thrilling Voice

Juilliard 4th year actors performed George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man this past week. The lovely Vivienne Benesch directed the production and led a behind the scenes event revealing the actors' process from script reading to stage. Benesch pointed out how Shaw's scripts were extremely language heavy and showed a couple of exercises the actors used to work through particularly challenging passages, including a hilarious game where the actors perform scenes speaking entirely in gibberish. Image the scene below, only completely indecipherable:



image via http://lib-1.lse.ac.uk/archivesblog/

Real Deal Diva

Renee Fleming conducted a master class as part of the re-dedication of The Peter Jay Sharp Theater at The Juilliard School last night. She was amazingly gracious with the participating Vocal Arts students, offering thoughtful advice and guidance while still engaging the audience in a really meaningful way. Not to mention she looked insanely gorgeous (those cheekbones!) and was immaculately dressed.

Fleming's next gig starts this Thursday, October 22nd at the Metropolitan Opera in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier.


photo via www.thehuffingtonpost.com

Perception vs. Reality

Composer Nico Muhly spoke to a room full of composition students, musicians and others yesterday on my lunch break. Because of his age, his cuteness, his professional grooming (protege of Philip Glass) and his more mainstream musical collaborations, Nico gets a lot of press. Its funny, most stories I read describe him as "impish" or use similar adjectives which I thought was silly before seeing him in the flesh. He truly is like some magical, wonderful, musical elf.

Plus he's an entertaining and articulate speaker. He dispensed invaluable advice to his audience when asked about his particular career path, his compositional process and navigating the special relationship between musicians, commissions and composers. Sometimes I forget that composers are such unique and special breeds of musicians.

Nico writes a prolific blog and one student asked a question directly lifted from the content of one of Nico's entries. It was a loaded inquiry regarding the New Music "scene" in New York and elsewhere. I admired his diplomacy and reluctance to perpetuate any exclusivity or negativity by dispelling any type of music scene to be more "perception than reality."

Mothertongue Pt. 2: Shower - N...

image via esquire.com

The Retributionists

I received comp tickets to the matinee of The Retributionists at the Playwrights Horizons theater in midtown over the weekend. The lead actress moo-ed her lines so distractingly I could scarcely enjoy the play at all. She was supposed to be some kind of manipulative femme fatale revenge mastermind, but instead she was just kind of exhausting.

The handsome Adam Driver provided some consolation. While he was at Juilliard, I saw him in Burn This and have been a fan ever since. His performance yesterday was a bright spot in this otherwise grim production.