De Stijl Music

Dan's Big Hands and Birthday Party Clown Screenings at OTCFF

2011-06-02T23:34:00.001-07:00

Two of my short films, Dan's Big Hands and Birthday Party Clown, will screen at the Out in Twin Cities Film Festival on Sunday, June 5, 2011, at 2:30 PM.

The screening is at the St Anthony Main theatre in Minneapolis.

Here's a link to the festival schedule.

Sheet music for a choral version of "Dan's Big Hands" is available here.

Film presskits are available here.

Matrixsynth blog posts "Signals" Video

2011-05-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2011/05/signals-jack-curtis-dubowsky-ensemble.html

This super cool synth blog has posted our video for "Signals" from JCDE 1, which begins with a "light show" by the Jupiter-6 synth!

NYC Dilemma (uncut version) screens at Microscope Gallery

2011-04-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

My short film, NYC Dilemma, I co-produced with Director Todd Wilson, is screening in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on April 30, 2011.
NYC Dilemma had its world premiere at BFI in London and its US Premiere at MIX Fest in NYC.
Here's the info about the screening.

Day Job
organized by Ben Coonley
Microscope Gallery
4 Charles Place
Bushwick
Brooklyn NY 11221

SATURDAY APRIL 30, 7PM
Admission $6 – Reservation recommended!

Contact:
tel: 347.925.1433
info@microscopegallery.com

The concept of a "day job" implies a kind of second-order activity. Though day jobs are financially expedient, they are generally assumed to be unrelated to the artist's raison d'être, making art. It may be embarrassing for an artist to admit to having a day job; some believe that successful artists do not work outside of the studio. But the waking hours and creative activities of most artists are deeply impacted by the non-studio-based things they do to make money. Day jobs may "wear us down" by sucking away precious time and energy on mundane or common tasks. But they also introduce us to problems, structures, routines, materials, skills, people and ideas (in short, subject matter) that we simply wouldn't have access to if we didn't have to work for a living.

This is a program of films created during, about, and for artists' day jobs. They include: remarkable films made as part of a non-art paid activity; films that were directly inspired by paid work activities; and films that were shot and/or edited on the sly while the artist was getting paid to do something else.

Artists include:

Marie Losier (French Institute Film Programmer)
Kent Lambert (Medical Film Archivist)
David Kay (Senior Encoder at a Late 90s Internet Startup)
XXXXXXX XXXXXXX (Artist Assistant)*
XXX XXXXXXX (Collectable Figurine Prototype Painter)*
Benj Gerdes (Wedding Videographer)
XXXX XXXXX (Video-on-Demand Supervisor)*
Jack Curtis Dubowsky (Music Studio Technician)
Ben Coonley (Instructional Practices Videographer)
Jesse Cain (Documentary Cinematographer)
Dianne Bellino (Oral Storyteller/Performer for Children)
And others…

Pink Apple 2011 Trailer

2011-03-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

Pink Apple (Zurich Switzerland film festival) features Jack Curtis Dubowsky in its new festival trailer for 2011!

Composer / Director Jack Curtis Dubowsky screened Dan's Big Hands at Pink Apple in 2009.

"Gentle Wind" screens at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

2011-01-11T19:03:00.000-08:00

Jack Curtis Dubowsky's digital video "Gentle Wind" screened Saturday, January 8, 2011 as part of the VCCA Filmmakers Showcase at the VCCA 40th Anniversary event at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia.

“Gentle Wind” (2008) (2:13) shows the persistence of nature within a highly urbanized environment: a plastic bag, the leaves of weeds sprouting in the pavement, and peeling paper from a disused billboard react to the motion of air. A birds flies over barren rooftops. Light penetrates an overpass. Our constructions also form part of “nature.”

Suny Monk of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts says, "We expect to use the film showcase for at least three other events - one now envisioned in tents (yea! could work beautifully), one in NYC (venue not yet known), one at our studio facilities in Auvillar France, and one here in the hayloft barn which will lend itself to the multiples concept."

Suny says, "We owe huge thanks to Karl Nussbaum whose brain hatched the first film ideas and who followed through to plan, notify, receive, edit and refine the showcase and to Lexie Boris, our director of communication, who worked alongside Karl and is handling the use of all the films going forward."

Here's an interview of Suny with Tanja Softic on TV! Tanja and I were fellows at VCCA together in November of 2009.

Here's the digital video of "Gentle Wind."

New Website: jackcurtisdubowsky.com

2010-12-13T02:06:00.000-08:00

Check out the new website, jackcurtisdubowsky.com

World premiere of “My Agnostic Solstice”

2010-12-06T22:44:00.000-08:00

The Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco presents the world premiere of “My Agnostic Solstice,” words and music by Jack Curtis Dubowsky, commissioned by Noam Szoke.

The new piece for mixed chorus explores a topic requested by Mr. Szoke: what does an agnostic or atheist sing on a Christmas concert?

“My Agnostic Solstice” will be performed in LGCSF’s legendary annual “Christmas Crap-Array” cabaret, December 16, 17, and 18, 2010 at 8 pm at the EXIT Theatre in San Francisco.

Dubowsky has enjoyed a long relationship with the chorus, which has performed much of his work, including “Silent Holy Hanukah Bush,” the controversial “Magic Snow,” and the choral opera Halloween in the Castro. Dubowsky’s choral music is available at sheetmusicplus.com.

The world's first mixed lesbian and gay chorus, LGCSF is dedicated to building and enriching the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender (LGBT) community through song and a love of music. The Chorus has performed around the world, and hundreds of times in San Francisco. LGCSF was founded in 1980 by Bay Area musicians and community members.

http://www.lgcsf.org/

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/136018

DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE PLAYS Depeche Mode's VIOLATOR (20th Anniversary Concert) at CAFE DU NORD !!! 7/28/10

2010-07-12T18:23:00.000-07:00

JACK CURTIS DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE "redefining musical boundaries" San Francisco Classical Voice 9/1/09

JACK CURTIS DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE & STRINGS

PERFORM DEPECHE MODE’S VIOLATOR ALBUM

LIVE IN CONCERT

DATE: Wednesday, July 28, 2010. Doors 7pm, show 8pm

VENUE: Cafe Du Nord, 2170 Market Street, San Francisco CA 94114. Phone: 415 861 5016

TICKETS: $10

BOX OFFICE: Tickets available at the door

ENSEMBLE WEBSITE: http://www.destijlmusic.com/jcde.html

VENUE WEBSITE: http://www.cafedunord.com

HIGH RES PHOTOS: http://www.destijlmusic.com/jcde.html

In a very special engagement, the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble and strings perform the entire Depeche Mode album Violator, start to finish, completely live, with no pre-records or sequencing. For the 20^th anniversary of this auspicious album, hear it live, as you have never heard it before.

The Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble, a groundbreaking new music ensemble led by classical and film composer Jack Curtis Dubowsky, combines acoustic instruments, electronic hardware, composed material and structured improvisation. The Ensemble treats analog synth as a rare and unpredictable performance instrument. The Ensemble's contemporary electroacoustic music, is performed and recorded live with no overdubs or sequencing. The Ensemble just released its second album, II, and returned from an April tour of the east coast.

The Ensemble has played chamber concert series, new music series, galleries, alternative performance spaces, and has also presented programs of live music to experimental film.

Personnel

Jack Curtis Dubowsky : Arrangements, Synthesizer, Vocals

Jake Harris : Trombone, Vocals

Fred Morgan : Drums

Yuri Kye : Violin

Alice Kao : Violin

Adam Young : Cello

Ari Gorman: Double Bass

Also appearing:

The Hurd Ensemble exists where electronic, classical, rock, experimental and jazz intersect, combining live electronics with violin, viola, cello, upright bass, and piano for driving, accessible, wildly rhythmic music filled with melody and extremes of percussion. Listen to samples of their work at www.georgehurd.com and www.youtube.com/georgehurd.

ElectroSonic Chamber
Experience the psychedelic sounds of The ElectroSonic Chamber, a four-piece band conceived and born in the Bay Area. Comprised of a Filipino and Bay Area natives, they are a splash of good old California sunshine sprinkled with Trans-Pacific flair. Loud enough to feel some good vibrations, a splendid time is guaranteed for all!
Wilfred Galila - Guitar/Vocals,
Dominic Mercurio - Drums/Samples,
Clint Forney - Guitar,
Joey Hassid - Keyboard.

About Violator

Released twenty years ago in 1990, Depeche Mode’s seventh studio album continued a commercial and artistic flirtation with the American west, the guitar, the synth, and the sampler, all while stretching the structural form of the pop song.

Violator comprises nine songs, two un-indexed experimental “interludes,” and four singles: “Personal Jesus,” “Enjoy the Silence,” “Policy of Truth,” and “World in My Eyes.” The album has sold 13.5 million copies to date, making it DM’s biggest seller, as well as one of Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” All of the songs are composed by Martin L. Gore, a combination of recluse and exhibitionist.

“Blue Dress” is really about Martin wearing the dress, not the implied second person. Seen in this manner, “Blue Dress” attempts to elucidate a sexual fetish much in the same vein as “Strangelove” and “Master and Servant.”

The demo version of “Enjoy the Silence” suggests the song was intended to be the next “Somebody” before Alan Wilder’s production pumped the simple chord progression to dance club intensity.

“Personal Jesus” continued both the use of guitar and the homoerotic buddy/savior fixation of “Never Let Me Down Again.” It followed in the twangy footsteps of their unexpected cover of “Route 66” that had been encouraged by their American label and parlayed into an alterative radio hit.

“Clean” features an echoic homage to Pink Floyd’s “One of These Days.”

The album remains to this day both popular and enigmatic, an unlikely crossover that remains influential to this day.

Recent Press

http://thephoenix.com/Providence/Picks/Event.aspx?id=657312&date=04-12-2010

http://epmusic.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/jack-curtis-dubowsky-ensemble-the-tank/

http://www.sequenza21.com/2009/09/ten-questions-for-jack-curtis-dubowsky/

http://www.sfcv.org/preview/dubowsky-ensemble-meets-its-meridian

http://www.sfcv.org/reviews/jack-curtis-dubowsky-ensemble/depeche-mode-lost-in-translation

DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE + STRINGS play Depeche Mode's VIOLATOR (20th Anniversary Concert) June 3, 2010

2010-05-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

JACK CURTIS DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE "redefining musical boundaries" San Francisco Classical Voice 9/1/09

JACK CURTIS DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE & STRINGS

PERFORM DEPECHE MODE’S VIOLATOR ALBUM

LIVE IN CONCERT

DATE: Thursday, June 3, 2010, 9 pm

VENUE: Eagle Tavern, 398 12th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-4330. Tel. (415) 626-0880

TICKETS: $6

BOX OFFICE: Tickets available at the door

ENSEMBLE WEBSITE: http://www.destijlmusic.com/jcde.html

VENUE WEBSITE: http://www.sfeagle.com/

HIGH RES PHOTOS: http://www.destijlmusic.com/jcde.html

The Ensemble has played chamber concert series, new music series, galleries, alternative performance spaces, and has also presented programs of live music to experimental film.

Personnel

Jack Curtis Dubowsky : Arrangements, Synthesizer, Vocals

Hall Goff : Trombone, Vocals

Fred Morgan : Drums

Yuri Kye : Violin

Alice Kao : Violin

Adam Young : Cello

Also appearing: Monks of Doom. (JCDE Violator goes on first.) http://www.magneticmotorworks.com/monksofdoom.html

Monks of Doom were formed in 1986 by four members of the ever-popular college/indie rock band Camper Van Beethoven.

About Violator

The demo version of “Enjoy the Silence” suggests the song was intended to be the next “Somebody” before Alan Wilder’s production pumped the simple chord progression to dance club intensity.

“Clean” features an echoic homage to Pink Floyd’s “One of These Days.”

The album remains both popular and enigmatic, an unlikely crossover that is influential to this day.

Recent Press

http://thephoenix.com/Providence/Picks/Event.aspx?id=657312&date=04-12-2010

http://epmusic.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/jack-curtis-dubowsky-ensemble-the-tank/

http://www.sequenza21.com/2009/09/ten-questions-for-jack-curtis-dubowsky/

http://www.sfcv.org/preview/dubowsky-ensemble-meets-its-meridian

Stephin Merritt 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea SFIFF

2010-05-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 4, 2010. Stephin Merritt's world premiere of his new score for the 1916 classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, presented by the San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre.

I was looking forward to this event, and I must say I was pretty pleased overall.

Merritt's interest in scoring film dates to the 2000 independent film Eban and Charley, although the eccentric, urbane, deep-voiced icon is most known for The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs, and lispy titles like The Sixths' Hyacinths and Thistles.

The best feature of Merritt's score was the extensive use of theatre organ, played by the Castro's own David Hegarty on the Castro's historic "Mighty Wurlizter." Merritt's score seemed custom-composed for the Castro Theatre and the Wurlitzer; a festival programmer who introduced the program indicated this event was originally slated for December, but rescheduled at Merritt's request in order to have the Castro and the organ.

There's a number of very cool things about Merritt's use of the Wurlitzer. Many programmers (SF International and SF Silent film festivals among others) bring in various ensembles (including Alloy, Clubfoot, Dengue Fever, Tom Verlaine, Brand Upon the Brain) into the Castro Theatre to do live music to film; few actually use the organ. Merritt's score feels site-specific, making the live performance extra special, incorporating not only the house instrument, but the house organist as well. The Wurlitzer is built into the Castro Theatre; what most people look at and perceive as the organ is in fact only the console. All the pipes and instruments and percussion attachments are in the walls and spaces behind mechanical louvers. It is essentially part of the building. Since the 1916 film was shot silent, organ accompaniment further reinforces romantic notions of the era. (The Castro Theatre was actually built in 1922, and the Wurlitzer actually installed in 1979, replacing a Conn 651 which probably dated from the 50s or 60s.)

Merritt and Hegarty were joined by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) on accordion, and a tuba player who was less than solid, but also suffered from passages written too fast for the instrument and without reasonable consideration for breathing. Daniel and Stephin also did some vocalizing, often through megaphones or processing which made them sound like voices from the past.

These vocalizations were amusing but at times tended to poke fun at the film, rather than draw viewers into its grainy world. While some lines might be uproariously clever (the cry of "help!" from a suspended balloonist, or the incessant falsetto "unhand me!" of a molested woman), it veered too often into Mystery Science Theatre 3000 territory - a predictable humor at the expense of the film.

This film was made nearly a century ago and deserves respect; it has been restored from a rare nitrate print at the UCLA archive, and odds are it may be around longer than any of Merritt's work. However, the director is no longer around to oversee its contemporary scoring, and was not available to guide Merritt as one might imagine: "hey, this part is not a joke. This is supposed to be sad / scary / etc." Having scored a few films myself, I have learned to become sensitive to and respectful of a director's intentions. While it is amusing to laugh at an old film, that is the easy way out. It is a greater challenge, but gives a greater cinematic experience, to compose music for an old film that creates in the mind of the viewer the same tension and immersion as a new release.

Nevertheless, wry humor is a big part of Merritt's simple, straightforward score. A feral woman lost on an island sings a song about how she doesn't want to wear pants. Each successive reel begins with essentially the same title card, an opportunity Merritt seizes to humorously reprise his main theme each time.

Here's Merritt's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea main theme:

Merritt's themes were related and used well throughout, instrumentally and with voice. Undersea sections tended to rely on electronics and "doppler" like "submarine" sounds, which could get a bit tiresome after a while. While some of Merritt's electronic sounds used in action sequences or on land could be quite interesting, there was enough underwater photography (quite a feat for a 1916 motion picture) that the underwater "ping" seemed to be a repetitive crutch which didn't match the inventiveness of other electronic sections.

Here are two photographs of Merritt's electronic setup.

That upright electronic thing with knobs appears homemade and has its own little keyboard with white keys that you can barely see, as there's another little box in front of it. Does anyone know what the upright thing with knobs is? Or where Merritt got it?

Merritt's music for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) is a mature electroacoustic score which incorporates electronics, tuba, accordion, voice, and theatre organ. It relies on humor to liven up the movie, which may or may not be the best thing for this film, although the Castro audience was certainly amused. The Castro was packed, and once again a program of live music to film was one of the finest offerings of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Quattrocelli Free Show at Amnesia

2010-03-19T00:27:00.000-07:00

Classical Revolution hosted a free show by Quattrocelli. Amazing. Amazing this touring German quartet can play in Turlock but not book a paying show in San Francisco. This is how low SF has fallen. Turlock has more opportunity for touring groups than San Francisco. I'm just saying.

At any rate, we are so fortunate that Classical Rev could get this happening for us. I arrived a bit late, so I didn't see all they opened with; it was apparently an Americana set featuring Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue, and the like. Lukas, the birthday boy cellist, vocalized a "trombone solo" on "Summertime" using his bow as a prop slide. It was very amusing and brought much laughter from the crowd.

The second half of the concert was an amazing set of film score music. Highlights included original arrangements of the Magnificent Seven title theme, the Empire March from Stern Kriege, some Morricone, and a really touching rendition of My Way. The entire show was performed off-book, with the notable exception being a few notes on slide-whistle, for which there was, comically and conspicuously, a music stand and part.

The sound of the group is amazing. You know how in the competitive barbershop world, the quartets carefully audition voices which blend perfectly? This was like that, but on cellos. The tone matched so perfectly, it was astounding. You could oftentimes hardly distinguish who was playing what part, you had to look closely. Quite amazing.

Outside of matched tone, there was lots of interesting cello technique on display. Notably, one large-handed cellist could strum his cello like a guitar, and also play it with a plectrum like a large guitar. This made an amazing sound.

If you missed Quattrocelli here in SF, catch them March 20 in Turlock (no kidding), or on the 21st and 22nd in Los Gatos (also no kidding.) Check their website for details on those gigs and the rest of their tour.

JACK CURTIS DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE embarks on East Coast Tour 2010

2010-03-05T01:16:00.000-08:00

For immediate release:

JACK CURTIS DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE embarks on East Coast Tour 2010

The release of Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble II , our 2nd album, is supported by these upcoming engagements:

Wed April 7 8-9 pm Endless Possibilities WRSU 88.7 New Brunswick NJ

Th April 8 9-10 pm Live Block BSR 88.1 FM WELH Providence RI

Fri April 9 9:30 pm The Tank, 354 West 45th St., NYC

Sat April 10 9 am-noon Fiat Flux WHUS 91.7 FM, Storrs CT

Sun April 11 2 pm Lily Pad, Cambridge MA

Mon April 12 9 pm AS220, Providence RI

"redefining musical boundaries" San Francisco Classical Voice 9/1/09

The Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble, a groundbreaking new music ensemble led by classical and film composer Jack Curtis Dubowsky, combines acoustic instruments, electronic hardware, composed material and structured improvisation. The Ensemble treats analog synth as a rare and unpredictable performance instrument. The Ensemble's contemporary electroacoustic music, abstract, spacious, and transcendental, is performed and recorded live with no overdubs, software, or sequencing.

Based in San Francisco, the Ensemble has played chamber concert series, new music series, galleries, alternative performance spaces, and has presented special programs of live music to experimental film. This April, the Ensemble embarks on their first tour of East Coast appearances in support of their second album, Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble II.

Performances at The Tank (NYC) and AS220 (Providence RI) include highlights from the Ensemble's programs of live music for experimental film, including shorts by Samara Halperin and Tom Graeff.

Detailed Tour Schedule

DATE: Wednesday, April 7, 8-9pm

RADIO PROGRAM: Endless Possibilities WRSU 88.7 New Brunswick NJ

PROGRAM WEBSITE: www.epmusic.wordpress.com/

STATION WEBSITE: www.wrsu.rutgers.edu/

DATE: Thursday, April 8 9-10pm

RADIO PROGRAM: Live Block BSR 88.1 FM WELH Providence RI

PROGRAM WEBSITE: www.bsrlive.com/archives/show.php?s=49

STATION WEBSITE: www.bsrlive.com/schedule/

DATE: Friday, April 9, 2010, 9:30 pm

VENUE: The Tank, 354 W 45th St, New York, NY 10036

Between 8th and 9th Aves. A,C,E to 42nd St/Times Sq.

Telephone: 212-563-6269

TICKETS: $10

BOX OFFICE: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/97288

EVENT WEBSITE: www.thetanknyc.org/music

VENUE CONTACT: Suzan Erasian suz@thetanknyc.org

DATE: Saturday, April 10, 9am-noon

RADIO PROGRAM: Fiat Flux WHUS 91.7 FM, Storrs CT

PROGRAM WEBSITE: www.fiatfluxradio.blogspot.com/

STATION WEBSITE: www.whus.org/schedule.php

DATE: Sunday, April 11, 2010, 2 pm

VENUE: The Lily Pad, Inman Square

1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge MA 02139

Telephone: (617) 395-1393

TICKETS: $10

BOX OFFICE: Tickets available at the door.

EVENT WEBSITE: www.lily-pad.net/archives/2010/04/11/

VENUE CONTACT: gill@lily-pad.net

DATE: Monday, April 12, 2010, 9 pm

VENUE: AS220

115 Empire Street, Providence RI, 02903

Telephone: 401-831-9327

TICKETS: $6

BOX OFFICE: Tickets available at the door

EVENT WEBSITE: www.as220.org/calendar.html

VENUE CONTACT: info@as220.org

JACK CURTIS DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE

MEMBER BIOS

Keyboardist and bassist Jack Curtis Dubowsky is an active composer, conductor, writer, educator, and filmmaker. Dubowsky has composed four chamber operas and scored five feature films including That Man Peter Berlin, Rock Haven, and Redwoods. The short film NYC Dilemma about this working composer premiered 2006 at BFI in London. Dubowsky's choral music has been performed internationally by groups including San Francisco Choral Artists, Desert Voices, Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, and Mount Eden Chorus. His orchestral music has been performed by Castro Valley Chamber Orchestra, and chamber music by Classical Revolution, Snopea Chamber Ensemble, Organic Sound Experiment, Collaborata, and Paradigm Brass. Dubowsky has received grants from Meet the Composer, Zellerbach Family Fund, Friends of San Francisco Public Library, and American Composers Forum. Dubowsky produced recordings by Winsome Griffles, Glen Meadmore, and Virgin Whore Complex. Dubowsky's award winning "Mr Jones" parody is a highlight of the Momus album Stars Forever. Dubowsky attended the Aspen School, and received his MM in Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Dubowsky studied composition with David Conte, Conrad Susa, Elinor Armer, and Michael Czajkowski. Dubowsky is a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His sheet music is distributed by SheetMusicPlus and Theodore Front Musical Literature.

Percussionist Fred Morgan received his BM in percussion performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under the study of Jack Van Geem and his MM from the New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Will Hudgins. Fred currently studies timpani with San Francisco Timpanist David Herbert; past teachers include Andrew Lewis, James Lee Wyatt, and Alan Hall. Fred played William Kraft's first timpani concerto with the Oakland East Bay Symphony in 2003 as a winner of the orchestra's Young Artist Competition. Fred was a member of the San Francisco Youth Symphony from 1997-2002. Fred has performed as a timpanist and percussionist in the Hong Kong Philharmonic, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Kansas City Symphony. Fred performs with SF Symphony brass and boys choir at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and has subbed with the Midsummer Mozart Festival. Fred participated in festivals of Spoleto USA, Schleswig-holstein, Music Academy of the West, Jeunnesses Musicales, National Orchestral Institute, and the Aspen Music Festival. Contemporary engagements include work with the Sprocket Ensemble and performances and recordings of the music of Erling Wold. Fred subs with the Oakland East bay Symphony and the Santa Rosa Symphony. Fred has received a percussion chair in the Stockton Symphony.

LINKS:

www.destijlmusic.com/jcde.html

www.myspace.com/jcdensemble

HIGH RES PHOTOS: http://www.destijlmusic.com/jcde.html (includes photo credits)

DISCOGRAPHY:

Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble I

Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble II

Make a Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble station on Pandora!

http://www.pandora.com/music/artist/jack+curtis+dubowsky

Or on Rhapsody:

http://www.rhapsody.com/jack-curtis-dubowsky-ensemble

RECENT PRESS:

http://www.sequenza21.com/2009/09/ten-questions-for-jack-curtis-dubowsky/

http://www.sfcv.org/preview/dubowsky-ensemble-meets-its-meridian

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/22/NSMQ1A5HHC.DTL

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/06/BAB119GUJR.DTL

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/around-town/events/Castro-Halloween-Lives-on---65771667.html

###

Dubowsky interview in Daily Film Music Blog

2010-01-22T15:39:00.001-08:00

My interview in the Daily Film Music Blog!

Enjoy!

That Man Peter Berlin Soundtrack Released

2009-11-19T17:51:00.001-08:00

Now on iTunes is the original motion picture soundtrack I composed for the 2005 award-winning documentary That Man Peter Berlin.

It also includes one bonus "alternate" (read rejected) cue, for the ending sequence "(If I could) Redo My Life."

Revisiting this score, I am pleased with how it sounds. It was recorded in my former studio in a Victorian garrett on Laguna Street in San Francisco. The score has real flute, oboe, and cello throughout. I used two computers synchronized via MTC (midi time code). One computer ran video (.movs) and serial MIDI, using Logic, to control a souped-up Emulator E6400 and a Proteus module. A second computer ran digital audio on ProTools. Audio went through an analog mixing console. The mixes were recorded to DAT (all tracks on the ProTools system being maxed out), and then transferred back to computer digitally.

I believe I have printed scores for the whole project, or at least for the flute, oboe, and cello parts, somewhere. There are some interesting synth sounds used as well. The idea was not to hide the use of electronics, but to use electronic sounds which might blend well and support the acoustic sounds. So it doesn't sound like synth orchestra, it sounds like its own natural, organic thing.

Musically it's also a very interesting score. Some of the themes are rather sophisticated for film music. Check out iTunes' sample clip for "War" with the "Peter" theme stated in the flute. That theme is used in many of the cues, but they all sound rather different. "Magazines and Kitty" features some interesting tone clusters.

Check out what a nice job the German distributor did editing together music and clips!

Here's the opening montage.

The Gaz Howards of San Francisco

2009-11-11T21:30:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I attended an art opening in San Francisco. Great and iconoclastic visual artists have come out of San Francisco, but nevertheless, art openings in San Francisco are not what they are in New York or London. Much of the crowd, and what passes for galleries, can usually be described in one of four ways: catering-to-tourists, young-DIY-art-students, Valencia hipsters, or residue-of-some-old-clique.

The opening I attended fell squarely into the last category, peppered with veterans of the mid-90s San Francisco underground performing arts scene, many of them still active with their endeavors.

One such performer whom I’d not seen in years approached me, all wide eyes and smiles, and immediately began to talk about himself. Something along the lines of, “Why haven’t you seen my show?” What a way to reanimate that old cliché, “But enough about me, what do you think about me?”

The other thing it brought to mind was the Gaz Howard character from HP Mendoza’s musical film, Fruitfly. I had just seen Fruitfly for a second time when I was at image+nation in Montréal. (My own film Dan’s Big Hands was the opening short. “But enough about me…”) I found I enjoyed Fruitfly much more the second time.

Gaz Howard is a locally successful performing artist (magician) who rapturously talks about himself at every opportunity, and always turns the conversation back to his own work, events, talent, and importance.

In a similar fashion, back at the gallery opening, once that performer was done hawking his show, there was nothing else to talk about and the conversation was over.

There seems to be too much of this attitude and approach in San Francisco. I always think it’s better to have other people talk about you, rather than talking about yourself. I wonder, is this unique to San Francisco? Does it happen everywhere? Is there something about San Francisco, the narrow confines of the city, the limited possibilities, and the suffocating compression of a small but ambitious art scene that fosters such a self-centered attitude?

Fruitfly received much criticism for its lack of plot and direction. Variety said the film has “low narrative drive” and “plotwise, little happens, and once introduced, subsidiary strands … are simply neglected.”

I would suggest that, in Gaz Howard, Mendoza had the perfect villain in his lap. It was only a missed opportunity. Gaz Howard could have really given the film a powerful climax, as opposed to being a loose thread in an otherwise fine tapestry. After Gaz gets the theatre instead of Beth, Gaz disappears and that plotline fizzles. From there it could have gone to another, higher, more dramatic level. I’m not going to suggest an alternate ending, other than to say that instead of having Gaz disappear, his character and all he represents could have played a major role in the film’s ending.

While Fruitfly seems to be about Beth and Windy, Hag and Fag, it is Gaz who supplies the most dramatic tension. And rightfully so. Windy is on Beth’s side. They may have misunderstandings and adventures together, but Gaz is evil lurking in disguise beneath a smiling exterior. We never see that evil fully realized, unleashed, and combated. I’m not suggesting who would triumph, or what the denouement might be. I am just saying, there’s your story. Gaz Howard v. Beth. Gaz could have amusingly been connected to some of the other evils presented as well. After all, San Francisco is a small town with many tangled webs.

Which returns me to gallery opening, which made me realize what a brilliant take on San Francisco life and culture Fruitfly is. Gaz brilliant caricatures many artists and scenesters.

Why are people like that? Does it make me want to go see their show? Is this personality type a natural breed or is it a result of the lack of appreciation for the arts? So many people run around screaming, “Look at me! Look at me!” If I dwell on it, I think, am I like that, too?

But enough about me. What do you think of me? Oh yes, and why haven’t you seen my show?

Opera as History Lesson ?

2009-10-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

I did an email interview with Drew Bourne, a PhD who writes the Using SF History Blog.

http://usingsfhistory.com/2009/10/20/history-as-opera-halloween-in-the-castro/

These are the questions he asked me and my responses.

Q1) How far back in time does the opera go in presenting Halloween in Eureka Valley / the Castro?

A) It is unspecific. In Act II, the Sister recalls previous Halloweens, and recounts the involvement of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The event grew from a neighborhood event to an event which was a fund raiser which raised money for charities and had shows and donations, then after some years became unmanageable. One year, there were more arrests than Sisters present hosting the event! This led to a vote in which the Sisters decided they could no longer host the event, because of the number of arrests and threat to public safety.

Q2) What kinds of sources were used to develop the opera's version of how Halloween changed over time in the Castro? For example, did you rely primarily on published material (books, newspaper accounts, articles for periodicals), or perhaps on oral histories / interviews with living persons? Did you use any material from any Bay Area archives (such as the San Francisco History Center, or the California Historical Society, or the GLBT Historical Society, or the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley)?

A) I lived in the Castro from 1994 to 2001. I've lived in SF on and off since 1991.

Factual research was done online sourcing legitimate news sources, including national television, mainstream press, and local gay press. Please see the attachments to this email.
You should understand that I use the story of Castro Halloween in the way a librettist uses a historical backdrop. This is very common in opera. Many operas are situated in political events or times; think of Tosca, Billy Budd, Le Grand Macabre, Doctor Atomic, Appomatox, and so on. The primary story is a human story, of love, death, tragedy, and strong human emotions. The opera uses Castro Halloween as a backdrop or locale for all that. The opera is not a documentary nor a docudrama. It's not a re-enactment. It mentions, in Act II, in the scene with the Sister, the horrors of Halloweens past, and all those horrific events are true. However, the 'present day' story of the opera is a fiction, it's drama.

I did not use the GLBT Historical Society for any research for this project, although I do have a connection to the archive. Director Todd Wilson passed away in 2005. I had scored Todd's groundbreaking TLA feature film Under One Roof, about an asian-white interracial gay relationship, and we had become close friends. When Todd passed away, he left behind boxes of art, photographs, scripts, notes, and film that the family was about to throw out. No one really came to 'claim' the material, and they had a whole house of stuff to deal with, and they were really not equipped to handle anything like that. I took all the boxes, as much as I could fit into my 1977 MG Midget (that I had at the time), and took it down to Terence at the Historical Society. They took ALL the material. It was a very emotional time and thing for me. I could not bear to see anyone's creative work thrown away like that. And I felt good that the archive took it all. I don't know if it's been catalogued yet. Some of the photographs are amazing. I thought about taking some of them, but I decided it would be best for posterity if the archive had the entire collection intact. So it's all there at the archive. One day I hope it's catalogued.

Q3) how do you see the history of Halloween in the Castro as being important? In other words, do you hope that audience members, upon gaining a richer understanding of that history, might somehow use that understanding in any particular ways?

A) The history of Castro Halloween is a microcosm for the issues facing San Francisco.

For many years, Halloween in the Castro has degenerated from a fun, quirky, San Francisco neighborhood event to a massive, uncontrollable human mass plagued by bashings and murder. While cities like New Orleans profit from gay events – Southern Decadence brings the city $100 Million or more – San Francisco has been unable to harness any similar benefit from its popular celebration. While simple solutions which would raise money for the city are plentiful – re-routing traffic, metal detectors, charging admission, a Guardian Angel type program to name a few – any solution is repeatedly ignored year after year, while politicians try to ‘cancel’ the event, leaving the Castro without street closures, toilets, or police protection, and allowing the bars to stay open and profit from mass consumption of alcohol.

The yearly Castro Halloween debate and debacle has become a microcosm for San Francisco at large. As San Francisco has grown with money and population from the technology boom, the facets which reflect a quirky, queer, hippy, idiosyncratic, beat, or neighborhood population have become rare, commodified, or disrupted. While the Castro is thought of as a ‘Gay Mecca,’ it struggles with how to manage an historic event through reoccurring violence and masses of gawkers. San Francisco as whole struggles with the loss of a creative, lower-income, hippy, queer population as it becomes swamped with a mainstream influx unconcerned with the lasting impact on what was a unique and delicate human environment.

Q4) How would you describe the challenges or opportunities inherent in using opera as a format to deliver an historical account (as opposed to using other formats, such as creating a documentary; publishing a book or article; developing a website; or staging a demonstration)?

A) Well, I'd like to emphasize that we're not delivering an historical account. We're putting on an opera. There's historical references in it, which are necessary to act as exposition for fictional events which unfold. Some bits of the opera are very Gilbert and Sullivan. The characters are archetypes, amalgamations, archetypical representations of classic San Francisco characters. The Bitter Queen. Castro Gym Queens. The City Supervisor. The Policewoman. And so on. Each of the characters is either archetypal, or an amalgamation of various San Francisco public figures. So there isn’t any direct, one-to-one correspondence with real people or historical figures. However, different political factions and popular approaches are represented. It’s fairly well known who the major interests in the Halloween situation are. Of course, some of the archetypes are mocked, in a very Gilbert and Sullivan kind of way, and there are of course references to real events and situations. The goal was to tell a story and to be real and true to the political concerns which are facing the Castro and San Francisco at large. Many of the characters are also based on personalities you commonly find here. And it’s a big cast with many important roles.

When opera tackles an historical account, contemporarily Doctor Atomic or Appomatox, for example, it's good in the sense that people know the story coming into the opera. They may not know all the details, or how it will be done, but they have an idea of what it's about. So it helps get an audience in the door and it helps get an audience interested and it helps find an audience which will relate to the subject matter.

The opera is very different from publishing a book or an article in a peer-reviewed journal, or making a website or staging a demonstration. To me that's a bit like comparing apples and oranges, and I'm not sure where to begin. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps they all fall into some kind of community activism. Because LGCSF, the commissioning arts organization, is a community organization, they are boldly making a political statement about Castro Halloween as a community. So much of the community has been subject to policy decisions (like closing muni stations, or putting up barricades not to protect pedestrian crowds from traffic, but to keep them crowded on the sidewalk). There have been "community meetings" but if you look at, for example, homeforhalloween.com, there's references to meetings which were never announced. Why not blog about the meeting before it happens so people will know about it? This opera could be considered a form of community activism, like a website or a demonstration. It's the community having their own say about the matter. The opera mocks the foibles and hypocrisies of local politics. It doesn't give out any solutions. It doesn't attempt to solve any problems. Like Gilbert and Sullivan, it just points out the flaws in the system, and suggests that Castro Halloween is worth caring about, and that there is a viable solution out there.

Silent, Holy, Hanukah Bush

2009-10-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

And, just in case, you were wondering what to sing for your upcoming Holiday Show...

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/Silent-Holy-Hanukah-Bush-SATB/19251119

José Antonio Sistiaga / Savage Republic / SF Cinématheque

2009-09-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

Sunday 20 Septembre 2009. Victoria Theatre. San Francisco Cinématheque presented a rare screening of José Antonio Sistiaga's Ere Erera Baleibu Icik Subua Aruaren (1970). (The whimsical title does not have any literal meaning.) This 75-minute, entirely hand-painted, silent, abstract film is rarely screened anywhere. The 35mm print, along with a 7 minute short also by Sistiaga, was flown from Paris for this screening. Sistiaga painted on both sides of the film, to give it an extra-dimensional effect, according to Cinématheque Executive Director Jonathan Marlow.

As the film begins, it looks like you are driving through a heavy rainstorm of paint droplets. No image holds longer than a single frame throughout the whole film. Mesmerizingly, the film continues, treating us to dynamic visuals reminiscent of rippling water, veined leaves, bubbles, splotches of blood, or burrowing through rock and stone.

What is clearly magical is the way the brain makes the images appear to move. In fact, each frame of film is very small and while projected large, is still a separate image. The appearance of movement is manufactured effortlessly by our own perception.

Savage Republic provided a confident, highly appropriate musical accompaniment. Guitarist / percussionist / vocalist Ethan Port told me the music was in fact instrumental songs of the band's, strung together and extended for the performance. So while not precisely new music composed specifically for the film, it was a perfect fit, loud, psychedelic, dreamy, and hypnotic, a few "eastern" scales, and lots of jam band stylings. One section of the show was an erstwhile concerto for oil drum; that oil drum was the loudest thing there!

Recent Press

2009-09-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

Sequenza21

San Francisco Chronicle, September 6, 2009, page C-1

SFGate City Insider Blog (same story as SF Chronicle, as a blog post)

San Francisco Classical Voice critics' pick and preview of Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble concert at Meridian Gallery Composers in Performance Series

New Music At Carnegie Hall Online Advertisement

2009-08-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

I just saw this online advertisement at the Sequenza21 website.
Notice who gets top billing.

SFCV: presents Dubowsky Ensemble Meets Its Meridian

2009-08-27T10:39:00.001-07:00

SFCV: presents Dubowsky Ensemble Meets Its Meridian

Shared via AddThis

Halloween in the Castro, First Rehearsal (Chorus)

2009-07-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Thursday July 9, was the first rehearsal of my opera Halloween in the Castro with the commissioning body, the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco.

I've been meaning to blog more, but I have been so busy with this project, and some others, it's really taken me away from writing on this blog. Perhaps I will create some other posts, out of chronology, of earlier events I'd meant to blog. Perhaps I won't.

So tonight the chorus read through most of the first completed draft. (070309) (July 3, 2009). It went very well. There's still some revisions I need to make. That's all I can think of really. Stephanie sat at the piano, and I sat just behind her to her right. I thought Stephanie would just distribute the choral numbers, but she gave them pretty much everything, so they have a good sense of the work. Shane laughed, "there's seven pages of 'you go girl.' " How baroque! Behold the Monster Polypheme!

Chanticleer / Composers | Our Age

2009-05-15T17:11:00.001-07:00

I'm finally getting around to writing about this Chanticleer concert March 20, 2009 at the San Francisco Conservatory. I have been quite busy composing Halloween in the Castro and other projects, so I'm going to rely on notes sketched in my program.

This concert featured new work from young emerging composers. All chose mature, literary selections of text for their work.

Tarik O'Regan didn't attend the concert. My notes on his "No Matter" indicate it made use of pyramids, which I think is interesting for vocal music. My notes also indicate "sustained high male falsetto will lead to much throat clearing." Chanticleer are a truly virtuoso group, and if you can force too much throat clearing from them, the problem is with you, pal, not the singers. Don't get carried away with groups who can "do anything." It's not an abusive proving ground for poor ideas. Now that my harsh critique is out of the way, my notes also say there was a moment of Ligeti Bagatelle like artifical overtones. That sounds very cool. Ligeti did that with woodwinds. I didn't expect to hear it in voices. The effect is when two high pitched tones rub or beat against each other, a third artifical overtone can be created, with the right combination. Way cool.

Shawn Crouch spoke a bit about his "The Garden of Paradise." This commission was made possible by a Chorus America Award through the Dale Warland Singers Fund; Dale was in the audience himself. Thanks Dale. Shawn said the text, a mash up of poems by Brian Turner and 13th century Persian Rumi, was inspired by his brother Kyle, who served as a Marine in Iraq, and the dilemma of "how to go before God knowing you've killed on the battlefield." There was a memorable chirping bit on the words "I am the bird from the Garden of Paradise." Of course, many composers have imitated bird sounds in their choral pieces. My notes on the program also indicate an "active refrain" on the words "It should make you shake and sweat."

Mason Bates, pictured above at the concert, discussed his piece "Sirens" and his interest in "electronica." I use quotes around "electronica" because I have my suspicions the word may grow dated, and may in fact trivialize the type of music it so succinctly describes. Moreover, "electronica" seems to both apply to a very narrow slice of electronic music and to be used as an overbroad brush stroke to pigeonhole a large body of music. At any rate, Mason said there were two aspects of "electronica" that he is particularly drawn to and which inform his classical work as well. First, there is a rhythmic aspect. Second, there is strong use of sonorities and textures.

Mason said that the movements of "Sirens" are "indebted to language" for their music; the movements are in Greek, German, Italian, Quechua, and English. I found the movements to be related but severable. Movement II, Die Lorelei, my notes describe as "grandiose, jazzy, tonal, chorale." Movement III featured a "twinkly Maj7." Movement IV, in Quechua, had spoken, rhythmic, whispering which reminded me of Mylène Farmer's "Alice"; it also had shakers and a catchy little rock refrain which I notated above. Movement V, my notes call "stunning. real music." Movement VI, my notes indicate "ends Sailor Moon." That is, if I heard it correctly. That's a mM7 chord used to end a piece, this is also used a lot in James Bond soundtracks. Mason's piece went really well, and shows he can write very strong choral as well as instrumental music.

I conclude this post by stating the obvious, how wonderful it is that a group as talented and respected as Chanticleer would have the enthusiasm, courage, and vision to program new works by emerging composers. I expect them to continue to do so. I hope they will program lots of new music into regular concerts as well. That's the best way for new work to penetrate public consciousness.

Los Angeles: Pastrami, Tacos, and Chili Dogs

2009-05-15T17:02:00.001-07:00

Would you eat a pastrami sandwich from a place that also serves tacos and chili dogs and burritos?

The Lost World with Dengue Fever at SF International Film Festival

2009-05-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

I am a big advocate of live music to film. I've curated and performed such shows myself. I think it's a great way to experience the art of music and theatre and film and performance all together in an exciting vibrant spectacle.

It's great that film festivals more and more are programming these kinds of events. At San Francisco International Film Festival this year, Dengue Fever performed a live sountrack to the silent stop-motion classic The Lost World (1925).

I'll acknowledge that I'd not heard of Dengue Fever, which people uniformly pronounced "Dengay Fever." The conductor-less group struck me as first and foremost a band. Which is to say, they are quite interesting and cross-cultural and great musicians, but they appear to traffic primarily in a pop idiom and are mostly comfortable working in song structures.

Apparently they are quite popular, and given their strengths, The Lost World was an excellent choice for them as a vehicle for performing a live, original score.

The Lost World features extensive stop-motion dinosaur action by animator Willis O'Brien, who later did King Kong. Especially remarkable were scenes including the heaving breaths of a fallen dino and closeups of snarling dinos. On the big screen at the Castro, with the live music, this was better than Jurassic Park. Dengue Fever's music, with contemporary beats, live trumpet and trombone, and effective keyboards, gave the film a great energy, and made it feel quite contemporary.

Today at a screening of Kimjongilia at the Kabuki, I was engaged in conversation with some other festival filmgoers who had also attended the Lost World program. Although the Lost World audience was terrifically enthusiastic (despite the guy next to me texting during the movie... what is it with some people?), not everyone, it turns out, was convinced.

While I was a little surprised these festivalgoers could be critical, I was able to pin-point what was at issue for them, having some expertise in these matters.

While Dengue Fever did play throughout the entire film, the music was structured primarily as a string of songs, not as actual underscore. So the main difference between their performance and the music you might ordinarily expect to accompany a motion picture was a difference of form. In cinema, the moving image typically creates or dictates the form of the music, which will fluidly accompany, support, and react to the film. Dengue Fever, as a band, is clearly more at home with song form. This was particularly in evidence when the band would stop at some points, and the audience would applaud, as it were the end of a song. Clearly for many in the audience, this was a Dengue Fever concert with film, which is okay too. I was told that some people in the audience had come wearing Dengue Fever t-shirts; if this is a popular band that brings in a new audience to experience live music with film, great. I can certainly forgive them their issues with form, which all musicians go through.

Another interesting facet of The Lost World relates to race in film. While the film is ostensibly set in London and the Amazon, there is included in the cast an obligatory blackface comic character who speaks (in intertitles) in the requisite jargon. He's paired with a cockney-accented British fellow, and they are both, as you might expect, servants or helpers or whatever you want to call it.

The film has been restored, but still appears washed out, with low contrast, and the color is inconsistent. It was suggested to me this was intentional tinting in the original, but I don't know about that. It was also suggested to me that this restoration was done on a very low budget and privately finanaced; this page seems to support that idea.

Oberlin Conservatory

2009-03-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

I feel honored by the opportunity to speak at Oberlin Conservatory with Leah Curtis, another composer. We did so much I can hardy remember what went on over the course of two days. On a Monday we spoke at an Entrepreneurship lunch, an Entrepreneurship Class, then we did a public lecture; the following day we had private meetings with students, then we spoke to Colin Roust's Film Music History Class. *whew* Not to mention lunches, dinners, and some poking around in the electronic studio, complete with ARP 2600. (mmmm 2600)

This is Colin Roust (L) and myself. Colin is a foremost authority on French composer Georges Auric. I eagerly await Colin's monograph on Auric. Auric, contemporary of Poulenc, Satie, Cocteau, member of Les Six, composed not only ballets and concert music, but scored over 120 films, including noir classic Rififi and Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete. I am eating scallops. Colin is eating some kind of pasta. This is at the fancy restaurant in Oberlin.

Leah Curtis (L) and myself having breakfast at Black River Café. Awesome biscuit. Leah's last name is my middle name and we have matching orange laptop bags. I should just stop there.

Leah Curtis, myself, and Colin Roust in Colin's corner classroom with great windows.

Love the black board. Real Conservatoire.

Here I stand proudly before Oberlin Conservatory's "Radiator Building." Everything was held at the Radiator Building except the entrepreneurship lunch. That was in Wilder Hall, which I wondered if it were named after Gene Wilder or Alan Wilder?

Here we are at Case in the office of Daniel Goldmark. The office is across from a practice room, which I think is quite cool, although I admit that could be distracting if you have work to do. L to R is Daniel Goldmark, Colin's daughter Ellie, and Colin Roust. Ellie's name reminds me of Ellie Armer, one of my Composition teachers. Daniel is the leading expert on music in American animation, as well as editor of Oxford University Press' Music/Media Series. Right now he's working more on film, music, Tin Pan Alley, sheet music covers, and a whole load of fascinating stuff. You need his books.

Daniel and I lunching at the Albatross, a hidden but very popular eatery near Case in Cleveland. We are sitting at the bar. I am having mussels and fries and Daniel is having a salad.

With the family Roust, I have BBQ in Vermilion at The Pit BBQ. Yes that's how they spell it: Vermilion.

Not bad. These were the kind of ribs that are cooked for a very long time so the meat just falls off the bone.

Columbus GA

2009-03-03T19:52:00.001-08:00

Academy Award Best Music (Score)

2009-02-22T20:35:00.000-08:00

My pick was Thomas Newman for Wall-E. Just for the quirky oboe tune and the beautiful space ballet music. I think it's Thomas Newman's best score to date, certainly his best since American Beauty (1999). And it certainly packed a lot of emotion into a concise, recognizable, distinctive score.

Dubowsky Ensemble Live Music to Experimental Film at ATA Feb 20

2009-02-19T19:53:00.000-08:00

JACK CURTIS DUBOWSKY ENSEMBLE
Performs Live Music to Experimental Film
Featuring Jean Genet’s Chant d’Amour, works by Derek Jarman, and contemporary experimental filmmakers.

DATE: Friday February 20, 2009, 8pm

VENUE: Artists’ Television Access (ATA)
992 Valencia Street San Francisco CA 94110
(415) 824-3890
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3524

COST: $6

HIGH RES PHOTOS: http://www.destijlmusic.com/jcde.html

The Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble, a groundbreaking new music ensemble led by classical and film composer Jack Curtis Dubowsky, performs live musical soundtracks to experimental films including Jean Genet’s underground classic Chant d’Amour (shot by Jean Cocteau), works by Derek Jarman, and new works by Phil Maxwell (UK), Hazuan Hashim (UK), Ben Coopersmith (NYC), and Samara Halperin (SF).

The Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble specializes in abstract, spacious, free form, transcendental, electro-acoustic contemporary music. Dubowsky has scored five feature films including That Man Peter Berlin and Rock Haven. Dubowsky has received grants from Meet the Composer, Zellerbach Family Fund, Friends of the SF Public Library, and this year from the American Composers Forum.

The Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble I album was performed and recorded live with no overdubs; no pre-recorded music is used in concert either.

2009 San Francisco Tape Music Festival, Friday Jan 30

2009-02-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

Schaeffer / McKinnon / Mercer / Block / Ussachevsky / Blum performances first half.

beep fffft neenerneener kkspt lslsls!!!

Had been sitting in the studio and working on Redwoods score all day.

So couldn't really sit and listen to any more loud music and didn't stay for the second half.

Sometimes you just need a break.

But you should go. Really. It was packed. And a young hip crowd too.

Scott Walker 30 Century Man

2009-01-24T02:19:00.000-08:00

Opening night at Opera Plaza in San Francisco, featuring a live appearance and QnA with director Stephen Kijak.

Kijak has lovingly made a music documentary of expatriate American Scott Walker, né Engel, who went from teen idol to iconic British "MOR" pop star to recluse. Walker went from making four albums in three years in the late 60s to making one album a decade in the 90s and 2000s. Fairly early in his solo career he stopped touring or playing live; the commercial failure of Scott 4 (his first album of all original material) became an insurmountable detriment. Nevertheless, his four early solo albums became highly influential and he became a cult figure homaged by the likes of Marc Almond and Julian Cope in the 1980s when he had all but disappeared.

This is a Jacques Brel song with English lyrics by Mort Shuman. They both also performed Brel's signature song, "Ne Me Quitte Pas," in English as "If You Go Away." Walker's own compositions were little stories set to music, much like the "Elinor Rigby" type lyrics of the Beatles or Blur. He often sang of sad lonely women, tattered lives, the "hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" viewpoint as once described by Pink Floyd, but with an added veneer of colorfully poetic visual imagery similar to Nick Drake's. One of many remarkable aspects of Scott Walker which could have been further investigated is how and why did an American become so quintessentially British, while not even faking the accent? (At the QnA, Kijak brought in new information about the Walkers avoiding Viet Nam by remaining in the UK; this would have been great to address in the film!)

Scott Walker resurfaced again in 1995 with Tilt, but his voice, though still croony, was not the same.

Walker's best known music is infused with drama and haunting arrangements, performed by live orchestral accompaniment. Sadly we learn little about Walker's personal life from the film; as a recluse, he is a tough nut to crack. Despite years of courting and cooperating with Walker, labels, management companies, handlers and the like, Kijak could film only one 40 minute interview with the singer. Does he have kids? Has he ever been in love? Who does he have relationships with? How has his personal life influenced his art? I still don't know.

The film feels bifurcated into an "early Scott" section, with memorabilia, old clips, photographs, and historical anecdotes, and a "making of" section about his most recent album. There's not much to connect the two, but that's ostensibly because... there isn't much to connect the two.

Like many documentaries of obscure cult musicians (see also my write up of the Arthur Russel documentary), Kijak's film is overly respectful of its subject. Celebrity interviews (Jarvis Cocker, Sting, Radiohead, David Bowie, Marc Almond) are there largely (but not entirely) to lend legitimacy to the subject matter.

By far the best part is interviews with old arrangers and musicians, talking about guitar parts and string parts, during which Kijak plays the exact snippets of music they are referring to. It is a fascinating and informative technique. Too often documentaries about musicians don't bother to include any real musical information. By including producers, engineers, arrangers, composers, and musicians in the film, Kijak gives it a truly gratifying depth and insight. Kijak is also upfront when he acknowledges he doesn't focus on Scott's albums from the 70s which he casts in the light of hackwork done for financial or business obligation.

The DVD should come out this summer, and hopefully there will be some extras to look forward to. And this film makes me really really really want to see a documentary about Angela Morley, who was born Wally Stott, and who did orchestra arrangements for Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield, and the first three Scott Walker solo albums. Wally had gender reassignment surgery in 1972, the same year as composer Wendy Carlos. Angela Morley also composed one of my favorite film scores, Watership Down. (No joke.) She worked in Hollywood for twenty years. Here's a bit from a BBC documentary about her.

There ya go. That would be a great documentary. Kijak has some great interviews of her. Sadly she died on January 14, 2009 at the age of 84. I don't know if Stephen Kijak knows. He didn't mention it. She was a truly amazing person. Enjoy some of her music from Watership Down.

"Sisyphus" Video - Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble

2009-01-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

Music Video for "Sisyphus" by the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble.
Available on the CD Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble I.
(c) + (p) 2008 De Stijl Music (BMI)

Jack Curtis Dubowsky: Roland Jupiter 6, Washburn Bantam Headless Electric Bass
Fred Morgan: Drums

Recorded live in studio without overdubs.
This is only two people, playing live!

Order the CD here http://cdbaby.com/cd/jackcurtisdubowsky
Also available on iTunes

Make friends with the JCD Ensemble on Myspace
http://www.myspace.com/jcdensemble

Directed, shot, and edited by Jack Curtis Dubowsky.

Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble at El Rio, Jan 10 2009

2009-01-21T00:30:00.000-08:00

Make a Jack Curtis Dubowsky station, free, on Pandora!

Or on Rhapsody!

Upcoming events:

2-20-09 : Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble at ATA. $6
Live music to experimental films including Jean Genet’s Chant D’Amour.

992 Valencia Street SF 94110 (415) 824-3890

Here's some pictures from the concert at El Rio on January 10, 2009.

Photos by Laurence Roberts.

Jack Curtis Dubowsky: Roland Jupiter 6, Electric Bass, Glock, Percussion

Fred Morgan: Drums, Percussion

Palermo Shooting / Wim Wenders / Berlin and Beyond Film Festival at The Castro

2009-01-20T23:49:00.000-08:00

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is really a much better parody of The Seventh Seal.

Good underscore though. Electronic with solo cello, saxophone, and accordion. One interesting nice bi-tonal section.

Wim Wenders is not the best public speaker you'll hear, but it was a rare opportunity to see the famed filmmaker in person. Some interesting discussion about photography, Dusseldorf, and the interesting cameo by real-life Sicilian photographer Letizia Battaglia.

Silent, Holy, Hanukah Bush / Such a Nice Brisket / LGCSF Crap-Array and Castro Theatre

2008-12-28T14:17:00.000-08:00

This post is going up a little bit late, but you know, the holidays and all.

LGCSF presented a wonderful Christmas "Crap-Array" which featured premieres of my Xmas carols, "Melvin the Elf," and "Melvin the Elf (Belt Version)," lyrics by Randy Timothy Nolan. It's about Santa teaching a selfish, errant Elf to enjoy doing good for others and making toys. *cough*. Singer Noam Szoke made wonderful flyers for this adult cabaret using striking imagery for "Melvin," and somehow (not my doing!) these ended up being publicized as far off as Birmingham Alabama! SF Weekly's listing comically got all the details wrong.

Wendy Tobias premiered a new song I wrote for her for the "Crap-Array," "Christmas at Your Parents." Quiet Christmas at home or visit the partner's family? You decide.

The chorus premiered my "Silent, Holy, Hanuka Bush," dedicated to my Mom, who never approved of such things. This heartwarming carol was also performed in Tuscon, Arizona by Desert Voices under the artistic directorship of Chris Tackett. The piece calls for mixed chorus and small, artificial Hanuka Bush. Here's a picture of Noam with the Hanukah Bush at the LGCSF show. Heartwarming!!!

LGCSF performed my piece "Such a Nice Brisket" at the holiday concert with SFGMC at the Castro Theatre. The program printed for the event did not accurately list LGCSF's setlist or my piece. Oh well. Here's a picture from the concert, which really did happen.

Last year LGCSF did my carol "Magic Snow" at the Castro, which spurred lots of local controversy! "Brisket" is a fun but musically challenging homage to the brisket. It can be programmed as a holiday piece or a serious concert piece. LGCSF first performed it in their classical concert about food.

Funeral Parade of Roses at The Revival House at ATA

2008-12-23T23:09:00.000-08:00

Wednesday December 17, 2008.

Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no soretsu) dir. Toshio Matsumoto, Japan, 1969.

Queens, club kids, drug dealers, and cabaret managers inhabit a monochromatic post-war Japanese underworld, cinematically reminiscent of Hiroshima Mon Amour, and imbued with a quintessentially Japanese combination of the deeply personal and utterly formalized detachment. I am told the film was influential on Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, and this may be true in the visual depiction of ultra-violence, but I can't source an actual quote from Kubrick himself on this. (Please leave a comment if you can source an actual Kubrick quote for me.) Sections of the film are almost experimental, and the editing becomes pleasantly free-form at times. The narrative is almost baffling and deceptively simple at the same time. Cleverly, cast members are interviewed within the film in a Brechtian touch; however, this is complicated by the presence of a pornographic film-within-a-film. Sometimes, the actors are interviewed as the actors of the porno, discussing that film; other times, they're interviewed as the actors of Funeral Parade of Roses itself, even discussing action which hasn't happened yet.

Funeral Parade of Roses was the Revival House series ender. Printed programs came with a CD of music from the screenings and web announcements, which is a nice touch. "T" did a great job putting this together. I hope this kind of programming continues in the future. ATA's location on the vibrant Valencia corridor is great for this kind of thing.

Jake Heggie's Three Decembers at Cal Zellerbach

2008-12-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

December 12, 2008 Cal Zellerbach Auditorium, Berkeley

Cal Performances and SF Opera present the West Coast premiere of Three Decembers by Jake Heggie, local San Franciscan, specialist in vocal music, and composer of operas Dead Man Walking and To Hell and Back.

First off, I notice the joint is comfortably half empty. The balcony was completely empty or closed, the mezzanine had a smattering of people, and the orchestra was about two-thirds full during the first act. I was seated in the left tier, row BB, with an excellent view of the stage; mine was the the only seat taken in a row of four seats. At least it's quality people in attendance. I did run into Leslie Ann Jones during intermission!

An over-enthusiastic usher shooed people away from the lowered pit before the show. There might have been a reason for this, but I've not seen this kind of shooing before. People like to look in the pit, is there a problem? The pit, which raised and lowered for effect, held the singers, and a reduced ensemble was set up on the stage: two pianos, three violins, one cello, one bass, a percussionist and a smattering of woodwinds. (What no viola? How West Side Story.) Conductor Patrick Summers, who seemed to cue only the orchestra, manned one piano, and at the second piano was the composer himself, participating in his own work.

Heggie's style can be summarily characterized by three traits.
1. Tonality. His work is conservatively tonal and easy for any audience to digest.
2. His melodies fit well in the vocal range of any singing voice he employs; singers clearly love singing his music, and you can see their enjoyment. He builds a scene well and plans things out to optimize each voice.
3. At the same time, Heggie maintains a deliberate avoidance of anything catchy or earwormy. You won't leave humming a banal ditty that's stuck in your ear.

The work, based on Terrence McNally's 1999 play Some Christmas Letters (and a Couple of Phone Calls), is neatly structured into three Decembers, 1986, 1996, and 2006. Gene Scheer's engaging libretto builds a full story around only three singers, a truly great challenge. It requires a real economy of style and strength of concept to create an opera that doesn't need a liberal peppering of supporting roles, let alone a chorus and supernumeraries. Sheer and Heggie pull it off in a big way. (Heggie works well in this reduced format; To Hell and Back also relied on phone calls, letters, and a small cast.)

The story involves overbearing mother Maddy (a part written expressly for Frederica von Stade aka Flicka), her adult son and daughter, and the haunting presence of the deceased father which permeates the whole opera. The father is the object of obsessive fascination by the adult children, even if all the son actually remembers is the father's chair. The father has become an idealized figure for the children who feel emotionally neglected by their self-obsessed, egomaniacal stage actress mother. (Maddy thoughtlessly wants to exploit her son Charley's partner's AIDS death in a Tony acceptance speech.) McNally and Scheer capture the way many straight people in the 80s and 90s tried to glibly profess some kind of empathy for AIDS suffering while simultaneously revealing their distaste for the whole matter.

Set numbers provide intermittent relief from family drama. Mom does a Broadway/cabaret type number. The kids do a number about easing your pain by shopping for shoes, which to me instantly recalled Kelly's viral meme. There's always room for more songs about... shoes. Heggie's shoes number, filled with intended and unintended intertextual references, connects the 1996 setting to today. A song about women (and by extension, gay men) self-medicating via shopping for shoes seems at once novel and cliché on the opera stage, but of course, the audience ate it up.

If you missed it, you can buy a two-CD set of the Houston Grand Opera world premiere.

"Spinet Mambo" Video - Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble

2008-12-07T22:50:00.000-08:00

Music Video for "Spinet Mambo" by the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble.
Available on the CD Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble I.
(c) + (p) 2008 De Stijl Music (BMI)

Jack Curtis Dubowsky: Spinet Piano, Roland Jupiter 6
Fred Morgan: Drums

Recorded live in studio without overdubs.
This is only two people, playing live!

http://cdbaby.com/cd/jackcurtisdubowsky
Also available on iTunes
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=282400282&s=143441
Make friends with the JCD Ensemble on Myspace
http://www.myspace.com/jcdensemble

Directed, shot, and edited by Jack Curtis Dubowsky.
Category: Music
Tags: Jack Curtis Dubowsky Fred Morgan electro acoustic electroacoustic new music contemporary spinet piano mambo wood wooden French bunny rabbit Roland Jupiter analog synth free improvisation drums drumming

Marc Shaiman's New Musical

2008-12-04T23:50:00.000-08:00

From Marc Shaiman (Hairspray, South Park (the Movie), City Slickers)

Ultravox on Tour in the UK

2008-12-04T23:16:00.001-08:00

Could this be real? Please buy me airfare and tickets! I've not seen Ultravox since Quartet. (Perkins Palace, Pasadena! Yes, with the giant building onstage that's on the Monument EP cover!) Interestingly, Billy Currie's website had a long blog, now taken down, which detailed bitter disagreements and negotiations with Ure, management companies, attorneys, and labels about various music business affairs. (Its removal, presumably a condition of the reunion, erases an interesting chronicle spanning several years.) Billy's website is still worth a visit, and I'm pleased to say his page on his collection of fiddles is still up, a page I find so cute and adorable, as you can sense the little conservatory kid still in him.

Tingle Tangle at Cafe du Nord

2008-12-04T23:08:00.000-08:00

Wednesday November 26, 2008.

The return of Tingle Tangle following the exciting drunken debacle at another venue (read my blog of that one here.) A wonderful Wednesday night, the return and resurfacing of old Klubstitute Kidz from yore, and all manner and sorts of performers.

Burlesque:

Boylesque:

Justin Bond with the barefoot, retro-Hank Williams/Lee Hazelwood Nathan

What is this??? Strange virtuoso bell-ringing performance.

Milk at the Castro Theatre

2008-12-01T22:40:00.000-08:00

Reliably made by Gus Van Sant, Milk is a carefully balanced film which thankfully does not fall into bathos or pandering, nor whitewash its colorful subject.

Given the final cut, I spent exactly the right amount of time on the set as a local extra. (Just a few hours at one shoot.) Of course you won't see me, but have fun looking for me in the scene where the historic Muni trolley car is disconnected from its overhead power lines. Talk about movie magic. They sure made that look exciting. I had to stifle a laugh when I heard the big BBZZZZTTT electric sound some sound designer had dropped in there.

It's funny how much the late 70s do look like today, with the return of beards, facial hair, washy earthy colors, and tight clothes made of soft fabrics. (Don't forget The GIANT glasses!)

Whereas last year's Paranoid Park was a quiet, emo, quintessentially Van Sant return to indie cinema, Milk is well-funded, liberal-minded, Hollywood fare. I kept seeing Sean Penn and thinking, no matter how well he does act, look, it's Sean Penn playing Harvey Milk! Isn't that funny? Maddy's ex playing a homosexual, imagine that. For contrast, we have Tom Ammiano playing... Tom Ammiano! And to think, they could do Penn's splendid Harvey schnoz and not have any Just For Men on the set for Tom?

Spiced with little cameos of known locals, the film should delight all who were "there" even if they didn't receive a consultancy or invitation to the premiere. While not earth-shattering, it's a hard film not to like. Although not a likely candidate for repeated viewing or major awards, Milk will hopefully find a national audience and win admiration for a man who knew the true meaning of "outreach," did real work to befriend other communities, and who didn't try to "educate" others with an air of smug entitlement.

The story of Harvey Milk speaks to politics today. Why did No on 8 lose? Why was No on 8 marketing, outreach, and television spots so poor? (What do you think Harvey have thought of this ad?!) Proponents of marriage equality didn't have a Harvey Milk, someone who could unify people, work with others, and inspire not only his own movement but people statewide. Without a Harvey Milk, proponents of marriage equality look for scapegoats on whom they can place blame, instead of building coalitions and reaching out in all languages in all corners with respect, which is what Harvey would have done.

Poison, Chant d'Amour at The Revival House, ATA

2008-12-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 19 November, Artists Television Access, San Francisco.

The Revival House: Classic. Queer. Cinema. presents

Poison (Todd Haynes, USA, 1991) and

Un Chant d'Amour (Jean Genet, France, 1950)

What could be unique and compelling about a bunch of kids watching DVDs in a drafty storefront in a town that already has an internationally renown LGBT film festival? That would be programming which lives up to its slogan.

Todd Haynes, like Jean Genet, specializes in a fascination with the queer conversion of boyhood shame, punishment, and abuse into pride and sexuality. This can be seen in his films Dottie Gets Spanked and Velvet Goldmine as well as Poison, wherein Haynes' retelling of Genet's Miracle of the Rose is also a cinematic homage to Genet's stylized tableaux of male prison fantasies, Un Chant d'Amour, shot by an uncredited Jean Cocteau.

For more on Poison, I highly recommend the authoritative book The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All that Heaven Allows, in particular the insightful essays by Sam Ishii-Gonzales, Lucas Hilderbrand, and Jon Davies.

Come see the Revival House Series Finale with Bara no soretsu (Funeral Parade of Roses, Japan 1969) on Wednesday, December 17, 8pm, at ATA, 992 Valencia Street at 21st.

Boris Godunov, Samuel Ramey, SF Opera

2008-11-26T12:19:00.000-08:00

Wednesday Nov. 12, 2008. SF Opera.

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky's original 1869 version, with libretto by Modest. Based on a historical tragedy by Pushkin and History of the Russian State by Karamzin. Starring Samuel Ramey as Boris, and Jack Gorlin as Fyodor, son of Boris. Jack Gorlin was the Little Prince in Rachel Portman's The Little Prince. At 12, he's already a consummate stage presence.

It refreshing to see the original version, which has been revised many times like a Hollywood movie: It isn't slick enough! We need a leading lady! We need a romance to bring in the women!

The true romance is of course between Boris and Power. (How very Russian!) The opera opens with a scene of serfs being beaten and forced to cheer for Boris, an archetypal introduction to an archetypal drama. This scene should have been darker and scarier. The opera has many highlights, notably a chiming, glittering coronation scene (with synthesized bells I think at SF Opera).

Boris Godunov has a raw power and energy to it which, in addition to being a hallmark of the Russian nationalist school, is a welcome breath of fresh air in the opera house, even today.

Brian Wilson at the Chicago Theatre

2008-11-20T00:33:00.000-08:00

Sunday November 16, The Chicago Theatre.

Undersold. Too many fluffy Beach Boys songs. The Brian, front and center, with a little video monitor to help with lyrics and banter for a show reaching nearly three hours. I was very impressed with Brian's singing, which otherwise has been quite strained on albums such as Orange Crate Art, and quite ProTooled on albums like the remake of SMiLE. What Brian did in concert was to simply not sing when the part went too high. He just layed out, saving his voice for where it is still quite capable. His band covered perfectly. It is important to note, if you want that Beach Boys sound, you don't need the Beach Boys: you just need the exact correct vocal arrangements, executed properly. Done. Close your eyes, the magic was always in Brian's arrangements.

The highlight of the evening was new album That Lucky Old Sun performed uninterrupted as a thirty-five minute concert piece. Really amazing. (Yet another homage to Los Angeles, but we can forgive that.) SMiLE clearly is not a one-off deal. He may be 67, but he's still got it in him.

Lang Lang at Chicago Symphony Center

2008-11-19T00:38:00.001-08:00

Saturday November 15, Lang Lang n Frenz at Chicago Symphony Center.

Though I regret I never saw Liberace, I feel this kind of makes up for it.

Lang Lang comes to Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco in December.

If you're lucky, he'll wear the same giant hideous silver brooch.

(I can't find any pictures of it, but it's been mentioned in other reviews.)

If he does, you'll for sure want to take him to Marlena's after the concert.

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell

2008-11-19T00:25:00.000-08:00

After discovering a pot pipe and marijuana paraphenalia in his son's room, Arthur's father says he "bounced him on the floor a couple times" and the next day his son ran away, eventually landing in NYC.

Cellist/composer/singer Arthur Russell may not have had the same amount of formal training as other downtown hipsters like Juilliard/Boulanger pedigreed Philip Glass, (the film does not detail Russell's time spent at the Manhattan School of Music) but nevertheless the young man became music director for influential performance hotspot The Kitchen. In the melieu of this cultural incubator, Russell connected with other emerging and established artists and performers.

The failure of a potentially high profile work with Robert Wilson confined Russell's career to arty but forgotten 12" dance club mixes issued under multiple fanciful monikers, further obscuring the artist from scrutiny or identification. As he had coped with disfiguring acne scars in adolescence, Russell avoided showing his face, polishing his diction, or establishing his name. Wild Combination doesn't investigate the workaholic's self-sabotage.

File under "obscure New York artists who died prematurely of AIDS." This growing genre of documentaries shows the loss of great minds and talents like Arthur Russell, regardless of what level of success or achievement they attained. We mourn the loss of these artists and the alternative culture they so actively created.

One of the touching parts of the film is the history of Russell's relationship with partner Tom Lee, a terrific interview subject, as well as the bonding between Tom and Russell's parents.

Winsome Griffles at the Fillmore Poster Room

2008-10-28T21:31:00.000-07:00

Monday October 27, 2008. My Fillmore debut, with my band The Winsome Griffles, in the Poster Room.

You can see the famous posters in the background. And our new banner!

We only had a teeny riser, so we made Larry sit in front!

Brad is playing a Cajon percussion box. We are really packed in tight. Brad also brought his cutest, teeniest little splash cymbals.

Mason Bates, Mark Applebaum, Adorno Ensemble at Knuth

2008-10-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

Thursday October 23, 2008.

"Elektro/Acoustik" (sic) Works by Mark Applebaum & Mason Bates, Presented by The Adorno Ensemble, New Music Ensemble-in-Residence at SF State. Knuth Hall.

Here's Mason Bates with a piece of gear! Ah, new music. Well I asked him to pose. So, partially my fault. "Mason Bates at Winter NAMM!" He deserves a better picture.

His website spash page says "Choose one: Electronica / Classical." Ah the irony. Do we need to choose? Mason has been, as a composer, a proponent of combining electronica and classical forms. He has been fortunate to have found a great number of artistic directors to program and commission his classical pieces which incorporate electronics. While classical pieces with tape have been around for decades (Morton Subotnick, Milton Babbitt, Vladimir Ussachevsky and so on), Mason and his contemporaries like Nico Muhly from the joint Columbia/Juilliard program have been enjoying newly-hip success and academic encouragement with the live instruments/prerecorded-electronic sounds combo. Mason's upcoming performances include Chanticleer, Winston-Salem Symphony, The California Symphony, even MTT and the San Francisco Symphony. And he's still young and fluffy. Am I jealous? Yes. As near as I can tell, the joint Columbia/Juilliard program and composition faculty offer an entrée into a world of opportunity unlike anything else in this country. He's also won both the Rome Prize and the American Academy in Berlin Prize. Mason's upcoming performance schedule blows away that of composition professors twice his age.

Not quite twice his age, but on the composition faculty at Stanford, is Mark Applebaum. While not really young and fluffy, he does have big hair, and colorful homemade gear!

Um, is that a toilet float?
Here he is bowing the Mousketier.

Oh yes and a loop station.

Mason performed three "interludes" on his laptop and controller gizmo throughout the program. His "White Lies for Lomax" was a tender, intriguing piece for solo piano beautifully executed by Keisuke Nakagoshi. Keisuke and I were both Composition majors at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) at the same time. He now works there as an accompanist. He is a gifted, brilliant pianist.

Mark Applebaum's "Theme in Search of Variations II" for violin, clarinet, cello, piano, and percussion began in a conventional "new music" style. Applebaum was a protégé in San Diego of "new complexity" composer Brian Ferneyhough, who subsequently brought him to Stanford. (Check out this photo of the pair from Applebaum's website!) Pleasantly, this piece redeemed itself, ending twinkly and celestial.

Applebaum's "Mousketier Praxis" was an improvisation by the composer/instrument builder on his Mousketier. Its clever sounds spoke of terminal hippie wanting a light show. Here multimedia would have been to the benefit of all involved, appropriate, and not merely tacked on. Mark's Mousketier proved to be its own popular petting zoo after the concert as well.

Mason Bate's "Red River" for violin, clarinet, piano, cello, and electronics (prerecorded) closed the show. I really liked this piece. It was captivating and restful and I may have nodded off through part of it but I awoke very slowly and I found it quite transportational and beautiful.

Following the concert was a reception in the grandest manner of SF State, which the composers did not attend, although they were plenty approachable and chatty as they packed up their gear in the concert hall. The reception afforded something of a little SFCM Class Reunion! For me, it's great and exciting to see SFCM alumni involved with new music in San Francisco.

Left to right, Cellist and IDM Conoisseur Alex Keitel, Composer-Author-Blogger Jack Curtis Dubowsky, Pianist and SFCM Poster Model Keisuke Nakagoshi.

Wonderful violist Michi Aceret!

In closing, I'd like to harp on the fact that to me, this was a choice event. This is one of the nation's top up-and-coming composers, wonderful performers, all for free. You'd expect it to be packed to the gills. Nah. Perhaps when it has the imprimatur of MTT and The SF Symphony, they'll buy tickets. It also reminds me of the old adage I coined myself summer 2001 at Aspen: "Beethoven, $60. New Music, Free." People will pay for the old classics, but you can't give away new original art music. Mark Applebaum could pull in more gawkers with the Mousketier at an arts and crafts fair in Mill Valley than at Knuth Hall. Mason Bates could get more people dancing at 111 Minna. And by the same token, they're not handing out Rome Prizes or American Academy Music Awards on the street. So why is the concert hall empty? Isn't this San Francisco, great cosmopolitan center for the arts?

"Such a Nice Brisket" World Premiere by LGCSF

2008-10-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

October 17 & 18, 2008.

On the 18th, I attended LGCSF Eats Out: A Classical Concert About Food, featuring the world premiere of my "Such a Nice Brisket" for mixed chorus.

This was right in Kanbar Hall, where the chorus rehearses, so they're very comfortable, and the room sounds great too.

I'm told they are going to memorize the piece and perform it on upcoming outreach concerts in Modesto and at the holiday concert with SFGMC in the Castro Theatre. That's Wednesday December 24th, the 9pm performance, at the Castro Theatre.

MBA & Venture Capitalist Night at SF Opera

2008-10-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

I got this email. I am not making this up.

Now, why they would mistake me for an MBA Venture Capitalist is beyond me.

(If they sent it to their whole database, that's even more baffling.)

Again - imagine getting this only days after my Chelsea on the Rocks post - this speaks to trends in the arts, population, and economy in San Francisco.

Remember opera in the park?

Remember Lotfi's making "opera for everyone?"

Remember commissioning opera based on popular Hollywood films?

Remember putting opera on movie screens? In baseball stadiums?

Well, hey, is that really going to work in today's economy? Let's just market opera as a networking opportunity for MBAs and Venture Capitalists!

The message I am feeling from SF Opera is, We know the economy's bad! We know the lower income folks are leaving! So we'll return to marketing opera as an elitist art form! And we'll send it to everyone, whether they can afford a subscription or not, because if they live here, well, they're just as likely as not to be hob-nobbing with people who have so much money they can throw it at any crazy tech idea that comes their way!

Look, I know you need butts in seats. And yeah, I haven't bought as many tickets as I could afford in previous years. But I think there's something about sending me this email that smells of poor taste. If you're going to reach out to MBAs and Venture Capitalists, don't you think you could buy a mailing list from Stanford or some appropriate source and do it more discreetly?

Chelsea on the Rocks at Doc Fest

2008-10-18T18:15:00.001-07:00

Friday October 17, 2008. Opening night of Doc Fest.

Abel Ferrara's Chelsea on the Rocks made a wonderful selection for opening night film, very timely and apropos for San Francisco. This quirky, semi-vérité, semi-docudrama, multiple-format documentary film really stokes the fires of bitterness as corporate greed and management consume and destroy the living, beating heart of a building which has housed artists, writers, and musicians for over one hundred years. Like the post-ordinateur San Francisco, why suffer an indigenous population of struggling artists to live in units which can be rented for $250-900 a night?

The appearances of many famous artists, writers, and musicians are disguised by not having introductory subtitles. As a result, you're not bombarded by résumés, but allowed to appreciate idiosyncratic artists for their own eccentricities.

You know, if you go to Paris, great artists and writers are no longer to be found at Café de Flore either. It is just for tourists. It is a bygone era.

You can preserve a building. Sadly it is more difficult to preserve the human element, especially those on the fringes of an urban society increasingly interested in war and money, and not trifling things like art and culture.

Ironically this film is sure to increase interest in a night's stay at the Chelsea, for those who can afford it. Come and meet the artists you're pushing out. Then again, maybe it will keep you in Manhattan and out of Bushwick for a while.

Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble at Luggage Store Gallery New Music Series

2008-10-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

Thursday October 16, 2008.

We play a show at the Luggage Store Gallery New Music series, curated by Rent Romus and Matt Davignon.

Well the front door was kinda busted giving a "Through the Looking Glass" vibe to the whole show. Made loading in a real adventure too. Through the rabbit hole, up the stairs! The show must go on!

After load in, we went to Tu Lan to drink Vietnamese Ice Coffee and eat pork, rice, and Imperial Rolls. Returning from Tu Lan, we saw this sign on the busted door.

The door is stuck! Just duck inside! And so people did. We arrived midway through Amar Chaudhary's set. He had some nice stuffed animals with sounds in them. And a Kaos Pad. mmmm Kaos Pad.

The JCDE show had Erika Johnson on Drums/Percussion, Hall Goff on Trombone/Electronics, and myself on Jupiter 6, Bass, Ocarina, Shaker, and Finger Cymbals. It was also the debut of our multimedia presentation, a longform DVD of overlapping imagery from the JCDE video shoots projected on a blank wall behind us.

Busted door and all, we had a great time playing this show, and the venue is a lot of fun. There are more concerts in the series coming up, check them out here.

Eden Log at French Cinema Now Festival

2008-10-13T16:36:00.000-07:00

October 11, Clay Theatre, French Cinema Now, presented by the San Francisco Film Society.

Warning: Contains spoilers.

A rare opportunity to catch an amazing new French sci-fi thriller, narratively structured after video games. First time director Franck Vestiel creates a dystopian environment in muted monochromatic tones of gray sludge. Eden Log owes a great deal to Fritz Lang's Metropolis in its above ground / underground dichotomy. Unlike Metropolis, Eden Log only slowly begins to make sense, and takes place nearly entirely below the surface. What is refreshing is the revolution in narrative structure. Vestiel abandons Hollywood three or four act narrative conventions and adheres to video game structure, replete with levels of Eden Log being clearly labeled as we ascend, and even a defeat-the-boss climax. Frequent blackouts, first introduced in a jarring opening sequence, frame the structure clearly. Fade to black is used consistently as a way to advance the narrative. Once we "come to," we may either be on a new level, or have escaped some danger, or landed in a new predicament. This keeps the story moving and allows a great sense of unpredictability.

Another interesting facet of the film is original music by Seppuku Paradigm, a series of ambient electronic atmospheres, textures, and washes. (Not like the obvious music in the trailer below.) It's a welcome break in the expected horror score genre. The look and sound of the film has garnered Vestiel comparisons to Aronofsky. And despite the intensely stylized look, there's a more than a hint of low budget in its tiny, claustrophobic sets, chain-link fences, loose plastic tubes, and gray slather. The film does not rely heavily on digital effects, and given the story concept, they are scarcely needed, again a pleasant break from today's sci-fi filmmaking.

Eden Log, especially on the big screen, gives the excitement of having seen something really new. It is now on DVD.

"Quiet Emperor" Video

2008-10-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

This is a video for "Quiet Emperor" from the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble I CD. "Quiet Emperor" was recorded live in the studio without overdubs. This is only two people, Fred Morgan and I, playing together live!

Our music is now on Pandora, so you can make a JCDE station! It plays cool stuff. You can also read how the Music Genome Project has described and cataloged our music. Here's how they analyze "Quiet Emperor":

IDM influences
electronica roots
downtempo influences
use of modal harmonies
minimalist arrangements
synth tweaking
mellow sounds
thin orchestration
subtle use of noise effects
trippy soundscapes

Eisenhower Farewell Address: World Premiere Oct 5, 2008

2008-10-08T23:02:00.000-07:00

I can't really blog my own premiere.

Here's what Paul Hertelendy wrote on artssf.com:

MEANWHILE, ACROSS THE BAY--- Very few community orchestras essay world premieres. Undaunted, the Castro Valley (CA) Adult School Chamber Orchestra performed Jack Curtis Dubowsky’s half-hour-long “Eisenhower Farewell Address,” setting to music and narration that president’s earnest-but-not-lyrical swan song delivered in 1961, with surprising parallels to today, decrying the “military-industrial complex,” and lamenting the elusiveness of peace as well as the hefty spending required by both. It was just as though President Eisenhower had a crystal ball to peer a half-century into the future.
All such musico-political efforts will inevitably be measured against the benchmark of Copland’s “A Lincoln Portrait,” in which the latter had manipulated the presidential texts to provide effective refrains (which Dubowsky, a 43-year-old San Franciscan, did not). Furthermore the new work collapsed into fragments, like an orange, without a true narration-to-music binding agent. Dubowsky however built a neat opening brass chorale on the president’s initial (D.D.E.), and later portrayed forcefully the busy machinery of military technology that Eisenhower had warned against.
The piece narrated on Oct. 5 by Scott Budman and led by Joshua Cohen should get another hearing, and more evaluation in depth, performed by some more experienced ensemble than this fearless, but not flawless, adult-school community orchestra.

Here's Scott Budman and I at the reception after the performance:

Scott did a terrific job. He has quite the voice.

Lunettes par Alain Mikli.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Saturday Oct 4

2008-10-04T21:29:00.000-07:00

My posse and I started the day with Samantha Robichaud at the Porch Stage. The Porch is my favorite stage at Hardly Strictly. It's the smallest, least crowded, most intimate, with a nicely sloped hill from which you can see the stage well. And it was sunny on the hill. Samantha is a wonderfully talented fiddle player with an engaging personality. She is only 20 according to the guide, but looked much older, wearing lots of makeup; really, when you're only 20, you will look much better without it. You're already young and beautiful. I've always been baffled by this phenomena of irony of young women wearing too much makeup. Makeup, historically speaking, has been used to imitate the flush of youth. In any case, she had a vibrancy and a fluency on her instrument which was quite captivating.

Next, we stopped in at the Arrow Stage for some of the Bad Livers. "Austin punk-rock" ? Hardly. Not quite what we expected from the program. It was nice enough though. No drums, "but they have tattoos" said one of my posse.

Next, Richard Thompson on the Star Stage. We were far back. He was a tiny speck on the stage. We could hear him very well though, and his singing and guitar playing was beautiful. Some comments about doing shanties and the difficulty of updating a shanty in the age of cruise ships were quite amusing. He is a real talent.

We stopped by Nick Lowe at the Rooster Stage but were not sufficiently engaged to brave the crowd.

Fleeing Rooster we went back to Arrow to catch the tail end of the Gourds, billed as "alternative country." They did not make a huge impression either way, but we'd had a lot of sun by then. We were at Arrow really to see Jerry Jeff Walker, as one of our posse is a huge fan of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and Jerry Jeff was billed as a similar "outlaw" country performer. It was good, but didn't really measure up to a Willie Nelson or Waylon Jennings show. Then again, you know, the sound is different, it's in a park, it's a different vibe.

Last, we went to the Banjo stage to hear Odetta. She was quite good, but we were pretty beat by then, and left ahead of the mass exodus which was sure to shortly ensue.

What a crowd. It's exciting being there among all the people and performers in Golden Gate Park. It seemed even less bluegrass than last year, but maybe that's because of the acts we happened to catch. We didn't really plan it carefully, and wandered around off the cuff a bit, which I think is a fair way to do the festival. It really is one of the coolest free things around San Francisco.

Die Tote Stadt, San Francisco Opera

2008-09-24T17:47:00.001-07:00

Tuesday September 23, 2008.

I've waiting a long time to see this. I had very high expectations.

Korngold's score is filled with clever orchestral moments, peppered like bon mots throughout the score. Yes, it's very Strauss, very 19th Century, and indeed a direct predecessor to Hollywood film music in its "golden age."

The story did not grab me. I was not taken by any of the characters or the situation, and the symbolism of the drama failed to impress me. Paul is just pathetic; pining for the unattainable, he reminded me a bit of Aschenbach in Britten's Death in Venice, except Paul is even less fun. The revised "oh it was just a dream" ending is just tired and obviously tacked on. Not much happens; Paul's struggle is largely internal. The opera is permeated by a continual, low level tension throughout, which fails to provide any real dramatic structure, and hence becomes wearisome. Upbeat moments with Marietta's dancer friends seem deliberately concocted and thrown in out of necessity. The moral of the story is "get over yourself Mary."

So yeah, I was diasppointed.

Classical Revolution Cafe

2008-09-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

Sunday September 21, 2008.

Oh yeah baby. Fun fun. Packed. Brahms Sextets 1 & 2. Serrano Pizza. Don't block the sidewalk. Oh hey we went to school together! Highly recommended. Crowded.

Grosse Abfahrt at Trinity Chamber Concerts

2008-09-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

Saturday September 20, 2008.

Berkeley is so weird. It's this strange mélange of old hippy, west coast academia, greek system kids, granola, money, seediness, sixties idealism, pizza shops, clothing stores. Just going to Berkeley, I have to visit Yogurt Park, because I regard that as the city's premiere cultural institution. And yet I have to make some excuses, it does have this giant University, which never seems like the West Coast Ivory Tower it supposes to be, given the students you have running around there. I brave all this to attend Trinity Concert Series presentation of Grosse Abfahrt. Light audience. Berkeley kids no, Conservatory kids no, Mills kids? Yes, of course. It seems they are the only young folk with enthusiasm for this sort of thing. Mysterious older types come out of hilltop redwood homes to park on Durant in biodiesel Mercedes conversions and bask in the intellectual glow in the small church.

Grosse Abfahrt is Tom Djll trumpets n electronics, Chris Brown piano, Jen Baker Trombone, Fred Frith Guitar, Matt Ingalls clarinet and fiddle, Tim Perkis, electronics, Gino Robair, percussion, Doepfer modules, and John Shirurba, guitar.

So you have eight people doing free improv. With eight people performing freely structured improv brings some curious results. The main issue is that the performers can hear and respond to the mass in general and the performers most closely next to them; but because of seating and monitoring arrangements, performers could clearly not hear or be fully aware of what people seated away from them were doing. I don't think Tom Djll and Fred Frith had any line of sight or ability to really hear the more subtle things they were doing, as they had three other performers right between them. Maybe complete sight lines are not necessary; but the group ends up jiving player-to-mass as opposed to player-to-player.

Without any conductor or imposed structure, another issue was the way the improvisations were constructed. Players seemed too restless to "lay out" for extended periods, so with eight of them, there were few really effective call-and-response passages, duets, solos, or trios. These usually occurred at the beginning of an improvisation, or as things were winding down.

The players all made great sounds and there were many surprises. Tom Djill used a CD as a mute, and played a strange little mini trumpet, and was fascinating to watch. Fred Frith, guitarist extraordinare on the scene for decades, dropped metal chains onto his pickups making astounding noises. Gino Robair, Clubfoot Alumnus, made wonder happen in percussion land. All the players are fine musicians. It would have been great if there had been more solo and true duet moments. Slow down. Breathe deeply. Let music happen. As John Cage would advise, pay attention to the rests, pay attention to where you do not play. How can you analyze the rests in your composition or improvisation?

I must commend Diane Grubbe and the Trinity Chamber Concert Series for booking and presenting new, adventurous, electro acoustic music. It is truly wonderful, new, vibrant, and exciting, and it's a great programmer and curator who will include it on an equal footing in their chamber music series.

SFEMF 2008: Szelag, Rutro, Buzzarté

2008-09-07T01:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 6, 2008. San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. Theatre Artaud.

Tonight had a thinner crowd. I'm not sure how the audience accurately chooses the most engaging evenings, but I wish I were more in the loop. (Pun intended. *cough*) Still, it was a good show of solid performances.

Local Agnes Szelag, who performed in Myrmyr on Friday night, did a pleasant piece on her own. Then an ensemble of other local performers billed as "Rutro & The Logs" explored injecting humor into the electronic music performance medium. Rutro explored the liminal space between introduction and performance, beginning with a speaker who extended Matt Davignon's opening remarks and kept requesting the "feedback" (sic) on the mic to be turned down (referring to the reverb). The tongue-in-cheek silliness continued with a video component of cut log bits rolling up and down a hill.

Monique Buzzarté finished the evening with three pieces which blended seamlessly into one performance for trombone, conch shell, and electronics, in particular, lots of looping. The opening "Elegy" (2006) nicely stacked layers of trombone into a warm, rich sound.

Do 5% Good

2008-09-06T23:37:00.001-07:00

I was surprised to see this ad on cnn.com. I am not making this up. This is a for real, genuine Target ad.

So, basically, every time you shop at Target, 95% of your money leaves your community. Gee thanks. I'd like to think that if you shop at a local business, ideally, 100% of your money stays in your local community. Maybe Target means to say they are donating 5% of their gross receivables to local charities... but that is not what the ad states. I'd take it at face value. While this is not a political blog and my academic background is not in economics... you can probably guess what I think of this. And the irony of the headline, "Do 5% Good," well, what's the other 95% doing every time you shop at Target? I thought I'd screen capture this ad and post it before someone at Target wakes up and has it taken down.

SFEMF 2008: Richard Teitelbaum, Myrmyr

2008-09-06T16:13:00.000-07:00

Friday, Sept 5, 2008. Theatre Artaud, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.

So glad to be here. Audience even larger and more vibrant than Thursday night. Lots of Mills kidz and grads. Lots of hippy academes. Great "west coast" vibe.

Richard Teitelbaum (b. 1939), professor of composition and electronic music at Bard, demonstrates you don't have to be young to be über hip! And nicely done, he has positioned himself toward the front of the stage facing sideways, so you can see a bit more of the laptop action. Nearly motionless, his fingers still move on the trackpad, giving a slight sense of performance. The big problem with tablecore, of course is, are you performing, or checking email? It seems like a good instrument for Teitelbaum. "Serenissima" for two winds and computer (premiere) made for interesting processing of the acoustic instruments. And contrabass clarinet? Nice. That's an instrument I'd like to see more on subway platforms and street fairs.

Myrmyr brought their fresh outta Mills n friends vibe to the evening with a largely improvised composition. I am told they also play Hotel Utah and do things that fit into the pop music format; I can't imagine what they did at SFEMF going down well at Hotel Utah! But you never know. I enjoy the cross pollination and it is all music to me.

SFEMF 2008: Campion, Buckner, Sweeten

2008-09-04T23:41:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 4, 2008. Theatre Artaud. San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.

Whee! So glad to be here. First up, Ray Sweeten. Really amazing, great piece, very powerful, very LOUD. Began with a throbbing bass, which built to very loud. I know that it takes a great deal more electrical energy (RMS signal voltage) to make a loud low end signal, so that I feared what would happen when any high end would be introduced. But the initial low end was awesome to bask in, vibrating the benches and the high risers and your body, and making random vibrations throughout the building, so that you feared a light might fall and drop on your head. However, once the highs were introduced, people were plugging their ears. I was surprised that such a hoity-toity electronic music festival would so quickly exceed OSHA standards. The music was accompanied by an oscilloscope style animation. Goodness knows I spent enough time staring at a lissajou pattern when I worked in recording studios aligning analog tape decks. (24 tracks in oh about 45 minutes when you do it everyday, several times a day, for a few years.) This video was much more compelling than a simple XY pattern and matched the sonic composition well, which climaxed with some rather tonal major chords and some suspensions or beat-like throbbing. Mr. Sweeten was pretty far back on the stage on a laptop. Don't chew gum when you take your bows. It minimizes our effort to have electronic music taken seriously as concert performance. Did they teach you to do that at Oberlin? I hope not. The other issue is that, without a mirror showing what you are doing, you might just be running a videopod and playing World of Warcraft on your laptop; if you chew gum onstage, why would the audience expect anything else?

Next up, baritone Thomas Buckner performing a piece by Edmund Campion (Professor of Music Composition at UC Berkeley) with text by brother John Campion. The backing track and vocal effects had lots of high end but the singer's amplified direct sound didn't, which made it a little difficult to decipher the lyrics at times. The lyrics were not printed in the program, which would have been nice, and traditional for the setting of an artsong. Oh well. The piece still came across very strong, and Buckner's performance was very dramatic. I did not quite understand everything that was going on with that hula-hoop though, or some of the little props on stage. Maybe better program notes in the future. "The form, technical infrastructure, and architecture of the work embody the content." Okay... "The large-scale form for ME mirrors, in its fun-house way, the classic seven yoga steps." We go to different yoga classes I think. I'm missing the reference. I think it's very compelling that electronic music is tackling serious artsong. It's a great way to go. And I could tell there was humor, sincerity, and terrific talent involved. I just wish I had caught all the details.

Last, Tujiko Noriko did her JPop thing. It should not have been the last thing on the program. It was kind of hello kitty, quiet is the new loud, boring is the new interesting, Kahimie Karie, Dominique A, Jpop kind of thing, and didn't quite fit the bill as new contemporary music. It might have been a pleasant opener. That's kind of mean, but, if you lessen my hyperbole a bit, you get the gist of what it was like. And of course, Mssrs. Sweeten and Buckner are hard acts to follow.

Pamela Z humbly MC'd and manned the pamphlets table, which was very nice. I remember ten years ago when she began to parlay crooning through a one rack unit digital delay into arts grant money and recognition. Way to go Pamela. It's great to see you still supporting other artists after so many years!

In Too Deep

2008-08-31T01:58:00.000-07:00

Recognize this? No? Kind of Gesualdo huh? Here's the original.

Tingle Tangle at Bubble Lounge

2008-08-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, August 27, 2008. I prefer going out on a weeknight. As the saying goes, going out on a weekend is for amateurs. And these people, Earl Dax and crew from NYC, they are no amateurs. Reeking of filthy glamour, old school lower east side east village grit, drag, grant money, and performance art, equally at home in a squalid bôite de nuit or an endowed museum like the Weimer New York show at SFMOMA, their worldly entourage recalls a day when Klubstitute reigned supreme over San Francisco's theatrical underbelly. But ensconced in the yuppified, gentrified, bottles-on-the-wall Bubble Lounge, beside $40 entrée sidewalk café Zagat rated tourist spots, (and the Scientology Center, as Mike Albo noted), what could one expect other than an internationally known promoter being ejected from his own event?

A cavalcade of performers, LaJohn Joseph, drag artistes, that skinny boy (who sang with Justin Bond at Weimar New York) with a Hank Williams croon, all circulated and performed and transported me to earlier decades. Their power exulted, making high and low art cross, intersect, intertwine, and become indistinguishable. Here are people who could rock Trannyshack but have long CVs and NY Times reviews to their credit. And this little Bubble Lounge tries to court the art scene and doesn't know when they've got it for real.

There was free drag too. And a wide variety of looks in the crowd, from flapper to dapper to calamity. I hope this night continues, at any venue in San Francisco. Maybe Oakland. This dessicated city, where people flyer their websites, needs this kind of live performance blood. And it brought out people I'd not seen in ages, who could smell something interesting and essential going on, enough to head out to North Beach. Again, by forcing people to make some effort to go out, it gets people dressing up again and excited about an evening of entertainment.

Wakefield Poole's Bijou (1972) at The Revival House / ATA

2008-08-21T01:56:00.000-07:00

This really is high art.

Eisenhower Farewell Address: Rehearsal August 19, 2008 Pics

2008-08-21T01:27:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from rehearsal. Not all the players present.

Josh Cohen conducting.

Nico Muhly at Swedish American Hall

2008-08-20T01:08:00.001-07:00

Monday, August 18th, 2008. Look at this crowd! Rarely have I seen such a mix of people: hippie intellectuals and super-young music scenesters. Not anyone I recognized from sfSound or the improv scene or from SF Conservatory, although my drummer/percussionist Fred Morgan did. The house was full but not sold out; it depressed me for an instant to think that you could be Talk of the Town and not sell out the Swedish American Hall. Nevertheless, I found the crowd remarkable. Where did they come from? The elders must be from Mill Valley, and the youngsters must all must have moved here last week from Brooklyn. I took it on myself to inquire, how did these people hear about this? Why were they there?

Besides the obligatory "my girlfriend brought me here," people of all ages claimed to have known about Nico Muhly for as long as two years either from friends, living in NYC (natch), the New Yorker write up, or from blogs; the one blog uniformly mentioned being Alex Ross.

I first heard about Nico Muhly in March 2008 when my soundtrack label, Movie Score Media, released Muhly's score to Joshua. Turns out Nico and I are labelmates on Movie Score Media, who distribute my Rock Haven soundtrack. The wonderful Mikael Carlsson who runs the label from Sweden regularly sends out emails about new releases, and the young prodigy's bio and sound samples piqued my interest. Right after that, I happened across the New Yorker piece, and next thing ya know, his name seems to be everywhere.

Nico is touring with two other names I'll admit I was completely unfamiliar with, although a minimum of internet research reveals they have labels and publicists of their own. It was nice to see "Sam" playing banjo. As my cohorts in The Winsome Griffles will attest, I've been playing banjo (or attempting to play banjo) way before it was hip.

In addition to Nico, Sam, and Doveman were a violist and a drummer, as well as an occasional guest electric guitarist. (And, on one Doveman number, a guest singer who sat terrified onstage and sang deliberately off mic, looking askance. "Awkward!") The three principals of the concert traded off pieces more or less round robin. It was enjoyable when the music drifted and you didn't notice where one piece ended and another began. It amused me that the group covered the keyboard's manufacturer (I'm guessing CASIO) with gaffer tape, but the Apple logo was left unaltered. (Especially since the sounds were coming from the Apple not the controller.) Most segments of the show were a bit on the poppy side, as Nico is travelling with two pop musicians in the twee / canadian / quiet is the new loud / brooklyn vegan vein of things.

Doveman and Nico were physically very close onstage. They shared a piano bench. Nico bonked him with his nose once, and brushed his hair, on mic, as a percussion instrument for one song. As Nico is now a famous homosexual, I had to wonder if they were special friends, or if they were just exhibiting the small personal space that young people are more comfortable with, like puppies or kittens. (Ou des minets.)

Nico's own music was the most interesting and dynamic of the concert. It is evident he is a talented conductor and ensemble player from his eye contact and head movement.

Nico's music bears similarities to that of mentor Philip Glass, particularly a foldness for 2 against 3 in his piano music, hemiolas, irregular rhythms and accents. One number early in the first set featured bright, sharp piano/vla accents, which it was fun to watch them synchronize. More than a few times you could see some counting going on. Nico's music fits well with current trends in both popular music and contemporary new music. His music requires a high but attainable level of musicianship. His piano solos seem at first repetitive and easy, but with metric modulations, and then you realize they are not all that easy, and yet not too difficult either. Nico's use of electronics (his published solo pieces often use prerecorded CDs as accompaniment) appears effortless and natural. While pieces of concert music incorporating tape have been around for decades, Nico's don't feel as much experimental as something he's fully integrated, having grown up in a world where pop music has already been electronic. Thus his pieces using electro accompaniment bridge the worlds of concert and pop music very well.

The concert closed with Nico's tripartite "The Only Tune" (Two Sisters/Old Mill Pond/The Only Tune) from Mothertongue, which features Sam singing in his folksy voice. This was a high point of the evening. Nico's original music has more dynamics than his tourmates' compositions. "The Only Tune" bridges genres, being a personal take on folk music, the song cycle, electro acoustic music, and new music. Nico's strength is not merely his hybridization of genres, but his ability to pick and choose their best aspects, and reconstruct and perform them with strong musicianship and confidence. Nico skillfully combines his exposure to many things: pop music, David Bowie, classical, concert music, church music, tape and electronic music, opera, folk, emo, all these different worlds coming together successfully.

I feel obligated to write a little about Nico Muhly the phenomenon.

There is a line of cute gay student composers from here to the beach in conservatories. Nico is very fortunate. He is talented too. He is doing things the right way: he is pursuing opportunities with vigor and performing with his friends. It's not clear what direction will claim him most. He could be a pop star. He could write more soundtracks, like Eliot Goldenthal, another Corigliano protégé. He could focus on his classical commissions. He could get a DMA, a Pulitzer, or a Grawmeyer, and become a high profile Professor of Composition like Thomas Adès did. If he can preserve his involvement in diverse areas, in my mind, that is the best. In this tour he shows that he likes to make music with his friends, and that is a powerful and honest thing for anyone to do.

As far as the flak he's received for his good fortune at receiving a commission from the Met, that sure is grist for the mill. Some comments indicate Muhly is too young, undeserving, or not fully formed enough to merit such an opportunity. We all end up shamed about some things we did or composed in our 20s. It is too early to know which ones they'll be, or how his style will develop. Well ya know what? Nico writes serviceable music and the story concept, with libretto by Craig Lucas, is interesting and topical. This is today. This is vibrant. This is about our culture. This is what opera is supposed to be. It's not a dead art form yet. As long as it's living, let it be truly alive.

Eisenhower Farewell Address: My Musical Typewriter.

2008-08-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a generous colleague and collector, I have borrowed a manual typewriter for the October 5, 2008 world premiere of my Eisenhower Farewell Address. The Castro Valley Chamber Orchestra has been rehearsing the half-hour composition for a couple weeks now. They've added a larger brass section, and Scott Budman from NBC 11 is the orator. Josh Cohen conducts.

This typewriter was chosen from the private collection for its volume, reliability, condition, and the swift action of the keys. It's a Royal "Aristocrat" portable from about 1954.

There are already several musical compositions employing typewriter. The most famous is Leroy Anderson's "The Typewriter." (1950) You can hear it here. And here's a video:

Anderson's typewriter part is the most difficult and challenging out there. The issues for this piece, especially for today, are that the carriage return and bell must be in perfect working order, and the typist must have control over speed and dexterity. It's a very showy part. The success of "The Typewriter" depends entirely upon the skill of the typist.

The typewriter doesn't need to be used this way. It can be used to create an environmental effect, without the pyrotechnics Anderson employs.

Rachel Portman uses the typewriter suitably in the businessman's number in her fanciful opera, The Little Prince. Portman also used typewriters in her score to Amelie.

Dolly Parton evokes the office environment with typewriter in "9 to 5"!

Frank Loesser uses a typewriter in "A Secretary is not a Toy" from How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (1961).

There is also some kind of "Boston Typewriter Orchestra" but it looks like it may have been a one-time novelty performance.

I'm sure there's other uses of typewriter, and I'd like to hear about them, especially if they're in significant classical/orchestral repertoire.

I hope you will come to the premiere, and hear the sound of this beautiful mechanical marvel.

"Signals" Video

2008-08-08T02:43:00.000-07:00

This is a video for "Signals" from the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble I CD. "Signals" was recorded live in the studio without overdubs. This is only two people, Fred Morgan and I, playing together live!

The track begins with an extended solo cadenza on Roland Jupiter 6 analog synthesizer. The lights you see in this video are the lights from the Roland Jupiter 6. From about 5:53 you will also see the lights from a Roland TR 808. The 808 was not used in this recording, but it looked good for the video!

Notes from GALA 2008: River City Gender Blender

2008-08-08T01:43:00.000-07:00

One of the nice surprises of the festival was from the River City Mixed Chorus of Omaha, Nebraska. The program listed one piece, "Gender Blender," by Mark Kurtz, unpublished. Mark turns out to be the group's own Music Director. The piece was remarkably fresh lyrically (despite the overly wry title), and its politics were as well-informed as anything coming from a coastal metropolis. Numerous chorus members bemoaned, "oh, we had to cut one of the pieces, you really should have heard it." Clearly, the singers were proud of the piece and their chorus. This performance illustrated many things about culture in this country. For starters, as I was once told in Mississippi, everyone gets Showtime. Nebraska, or any other orthagonal state, is not necessarily a cultural or sexual backwater. It can be a fertile ground for interesting, cutting-edge, original work. Nor will a group from such an area necessarily fall victim to self-censorship, or fear of performing such work. I do wonder if Omaha is really an open, welcoming place filled with heartwarming trannies, or if the sensibility was copped from visits elsewhere. I also think it's good to have original music which is upbeat, witty, and positive. I hope the Chorus gets a lot of mileage out of Kurtz's piece.

"Gentle Wind" Video

2008-08-05T03:44:00.001-07:00

This is a video for "Gentle Wind" from the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble I CD. You're hearing just Fred Morgan and me, on drums and Roland Jupiter 6, recorded live in studio with no overdubs. I shot and edited this video myself. (Unfortunately, YouTube degrades the audio. I've been reading about that online. I'm not going to fight their janky compression algorithm. So here it is in mono with artifacts, despite the high quality of the source file.)

We titled these compositions after the fact. I caught all the images of things moving in the breeze and the birds by happy accident. And I think this video has a good daytime look which stylistically matches the album cover designed by Ben Coopersmith. The album is also available on iTunes. One interesting feature of this track is the meter. 9/8. It's a fairly uncommon meter, although it is in no way bizarre.

Notes from GALA 2008: The Slash Chorus Chickenz

2008-07-31T01:05:00.001-07:00

I don't know what it is. There's just something envigorating about performing with a bunch of chickens. Here I find myself backstage at Ziff Ballet Opera House on the rehearsal stage. The chickens and the Slash Chorus, LGCSF, the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, are running through some moves before going onstage before a house of 2,454 seats. From the stage, Artistic Director Stephanie Lynne Smith offers the costumes to any takers after the show. Before they even get to the lobby they are all taken. Except one, which the Chorus will keep for their records, as a maquette, in case they revive June Bonacich's musical Group Therapy.

Notes from GALA 2008: Kislev Cowboys

2008-07-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

July 13, 2008. Knight Concert Hall, Miami. Captain Smartypants. I loved their set, and in particular this number! Behold "Kislev Cowboys," if you didn't catch it at GALA.

One of the many challenges facing the GALA choral movement is ethnic diversity.

I could see this in quite a few large choruses, from highly diversified regions of the United States, which underrepresented people of color, especially African Americans. It certainly wasn't for lack of trying, as evident in their programming; these groups routinely and respectfully attempted multicultural material. But by and large at GALA, it seems the Africans have rhythm and bang on things, the Natives (American Indian, Maori, Polynesian and otherwise) are happy, and the Jews are miserable and sing about peace. I am reticent to cite musical selections, because doing so would identify the choruses in question. (Trust me, I have a list.) These choruses are all fine groups which do not deserve to be raked over the coals for honest attempts at inclusion and musical variety, many of which were effective crowd pleasers.

To be fair, there is a history in the gay community of "Village People" type multiculturalism, celebrating diversity through stereotypes reduced to well-intentioned sexual objectification. Perhaps that's fine, but will it encourage African Americans and people of color to join the chorus? Now, as far as the Jew material, I feel I am entitled to comment. Please buckle your seat belt.

I want to address why "Kislev Cowboys" is funny. Writing about humor is not amusing or witty, so this may sting a little. "Kislev Cowboys" is not funny because there's no such thing as a Jewish cowboy. No. Maybe that's why you laughed. Fine. That's not the joke. That's like laughing at the final verse of "Zip Coon" because obviously a Negro could never run for President. (apropos, huh? If you are lost, google "Zip Coon.")

"Kislev Cowboys" is funny because dreidel is a stupid, boring game. It's on par with Candyland. No one likes to play dreidel. The joke is that these fun-loving cowboys would want to play dreidel.

Let's parse this a bit. What are the funniest moments of the song? The best is certainly when the cowboys play dreidel on stage. Why? You can see how lame it is. It is a fitting non-sequitur to both the active life of the macho cowboy and the quiet stillness of the prairie. Why the blazes would cowboys play dreidel? Well, what else is there to do? The Pony Express must be late with the Netflix again. Or, maybe it's how cowboys determine who gets to be in the saddle.

The other highlight is any prominent solo line like "I made it out of clay" or "Dreidel I will play" delivered all hammed up with cowboy shtick. This is because one set of musical conventions has been substituted for another, and it works completely. To do "Dreidel" as the sing-song childish nursery rhyme it is would be appalling. To substitute another equally appalling but unexpected cliché is funny. Get it? It's not your Bubby's dreidel, but it's still cheesy! It's all about the cheese! (Oi that's a milchigte luau!)

Captain Smartypants got it right. I don't need to be pandered to with some weepy fiddle and shalom this and that. Give me a break. Or how about some nice I - N6 - I - N6 - I - N6 - iv - I ? As Morrissey put so eloquently, "It says nothing to me about my life." Hey, why don't you buy a copy of Heeb magazine and get a little up to date?

At a bleary 10am on Saturday July 19, Eric Lane Barnes held a master class workshop for small ensembles. The composer of "Kislev Cowboys" made a salient comment: if you don't have a good Hanukah number, don't insult the Jews by doing a bad one. I applauded. And I think this applies to all attempts at multicultural programming.

Come Inside

2008-07-29T19:25:00.000-07:00

Recognize this? Bet you didn't know there was such a beautiful, sincere, touching artsong hiding beneath all that obvious innuendo and hyperactive SAW production. Still don't get it? Here's the original.

Notes from GALA 2008: Every Sign is Sacred

2008-07-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

July 15, 2008, Knight Concert Hall, Miami.

Anna Crusis Women’s Choir from Philadelphia had performed an awesome set, including the Kinsey Sicks’ “I Wanna Be a Republican” and the amusing “Madrigals for the Information Age.” James Rowe, their ASL interpreter, did an amazing job entertaining the audience at large. The signage at GALA doesn’t look like regular sign language. It is closer to interpretive dance. This becomes quite a show, especially with larger choruses who aren’t as able to incorporate a lot of movement into their presentation. I thought Rowe had done the biggest ASL performance I’d seen. Until the next act came on.

Seattle Men’s Chorus did a strong set of crowd-pleasing material. I found myself captivated by their ASL interpreter. He was a small, spritely twink type who bounded around the stage. As my Polari-fluent Belfast native friend “Wozzeck” says, “Oh, I’m in love.” Here’s the youngest ASL interpreter at the festival, and I could feel the concert hall watching him as well. He must be twenty at most. I’m not sitting close, and the hall holds 2,500 people. So I can’t tell for sure.

Off program, Seattle Men’s Chorus added Monty Python’s “Every Sperm is Sacred” (1983, Howman/Jacquemin/Palin/Jones) which of course I recognized from the first line, “There are Jews in the world.” There was quite a delay of recognition in the hall until we got to the chorus. Many people I know were practically raised on Monty Python, and my old cabaret trio Larry, Hall, and Jack did plenty of it. Even the Winsome Griffles could turn a Python tune into a hill billy number.

Kevin Gallagher, the ASL interpreter, had the audience in stitches with this number. If he had come close to upstaging the chorus earlier, here he definitely did. Kevin even had a brief but prominent surprise solo vocal: the final “and mine” normally given to a bass voice. (If you don’t get the joke here, watch The Meaning of Life.)

At the GALA Legacy Awards Reception, Kevin Gallagher was an honoree and recipient. It turns out Kevin has already been signing for the Seattle Men’s Chorus for twenty-eight years. Shocking! I was amazed. At the closing night party, thrown at the Hyatt by SFGMC, I had the pleasure of meeting this Kevin Gallagher in person. He was much taller than he looked on stage. He was very nice, a little soft-spoken, and rail slender. Very dashing. I am impressed by his transcendence of age. I have seen it in a few dancers, like Kathy Mata at San Francisco Dance Center. At top is a pic of Kevin and me at the party.

Everyone left the Seattle show with, if nothing else, a lasting impression of how to make the sign for ‘ejaculation’ or ‘ejaculate.’

Our ASL interpreter, for the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco (a.k.a. The Slash Chorus or LGCSF) which performed my music at GALA, was Ethan. He had giant hands well suited for signing. I asked him if the pun in my piece “Magic Snow” made sense in sign language as well. Yes it did. Ethan was later seen at the closing night party go-go dancing. Here’s a pic of Ethan rehearsing backstage at the Ziff Ballet Opera House with The Slash Chorus, LGCSF.

Yazoo at Paramount Theatre Oakland, or Vince Clarke, Master of Counterpoint

2008-07-07T23:47:00.000-07:00

Monday, July 7, 2008.

This was the concert we had waited 25 years for. Appropriately, it happened on the stage of the Paramount Theatre, home to Maestro Michael Morgan's Oakland East Bay Symphony, with the two performers dressed in concert black.

The stage was empty except for two risers; even the wedge monitors were nicely concealed. Behind it two giant, transparent, low resolution video arrays shone gritty stylized animations forward, lighting the performers in silhouette.

Alison Moyet still has the pipes. No problem there. Every note and inflection managed effortlessly. Occasionally some harmony parts were added from audio backing tracks, but that really wasn't necessary. It is amazing to see Moyet sing live. She is hardly a showman, but she can sing.

One of my entourage remarked, as one often hears, "What is Vince doing up there?" Vince is famously shy about his own voice and steadfast in leaving any florid or critical keyboard parts to sequenced perfection. There's a little bit of singing through a vocoder. Maybe he's doing something in Ableton live; maybe Reaktor, who knows. Does Vince need to do anything? This is the man who walked away from Depeche Mode. This is the man who provided Stock Aikman Waterman, New Order, and countless others nearly all their production and sequencing ideas, and did it with far greater taste and economy.

Vince can take a progression as simple and common as he employs in "Only You" (I, V6, vi, V, IV, I6, II, V) and make it absolutely fresh and compelling by the strength of melody, arrangement, and counterpoint. Not to mention seductive synth sounds meticulously sculpted. Vince pays more heed to horizontal movement than vertical progression. Witness the detailed precision of "Too Pieces." Chirpy lines dart and interweave, hypnotizing, until the bass kicks in, and oh! but it's all really just I, IV, I, IV.

Or hear the dreamy, modal magic of "Winter Kills." Minor with a trippy raised 6th scale degree; then the bass descends like a baroque ground bass, with the lowered 6th. Absolutely beautiful with Moyet's voice, and simple yet startlingly fresh.

By the time Vince got to working with Andy Bell, his compositions became polished and polite. They still sparkled, but they were free of the happy accidents, artistic tension, and stylistic collisions which marked his work with Moyet.

A highlight of the show was "I Before E Except After C," something of a musique concrete / tape manipulation piece. In a bit of theatre (since nobody knows where the sounds are actually coming from these days), Vince himself wheeled out an old reel to reel tape player to center stage, and the performers left while the reels spun and the piece played. Vince updated the piece with some drum cutups and stutter edits that would have made bt or Autechre proud.

The audience was fairly well aged and padded. No one was dressed fun except me, to my surprise and disappointment. I wore a shirt I made myself, back in the day before Villains, Lip Service, and off-the-rack rock star clothes. I dressed in monochrome, of course, this being the 82/83 era. I was a little surprised that young people were not there in force; they seem to know about Kraftwerk and Devo and attend those shows. I wonder what the crowd will be like in their four nights in Los Angeles, where Yazoo singles once lived in heavy rotation at KROQ.

I am blogging

2008-07-06T21:09:00.000-07:00

I am blogging.