2 posts tagged “cornell”

My knowledge of contemporary classical and experimental music is minuscule, but I have loved Ingram Marshall's Fog Tropes since Richard Kadrey plugged it in his 1995 novel Kamikaze L'Amour and it sounded interesting enough that I bought a CD of it.  The piece consists of a tape of foghorns (from San Francisco Bay) and a score for live brass ensemble; it sounds mysterious and mesmerizing, haunting and soothing.  For several months my daughter played it every night at bedtime.  It is the piece that catapulted Marshall to a successful career as a commissioned composer*.  Thus I made sure to attend the Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center's Leap Day Concert on Friday, which was to feature a performance of Fog Tropes with Ingram Marshall himself in attendance.  The live group for this performance was a brass sextet; in his introduction, Marshall professed it a rare treat to hear a tuba playing along with the foghorns.  It was a rare treat for me to hear Fog Tropes performed live at all, and I left with that feeling of having experienced real transcendence that is the gift of the very best art.  (And I got to shake hands with Marshall, too!)  Thanks to the iSound Player, I can offer Fog Tropes right here, as a stream or a free download (if the download doesn't work from here, then go here), and three more Ingram Marshall compositions as well.

* Based on the program notes by Stephen Gorbos.

We don't get a lot of Jewish culture in the Veneer household, but we got a double dose this week.  On Thursday night the Israeli "Afro Beat Jewish Punk" band Teapacks played a free show at Cornell, so I took the kids to see that.  Sure enough, their music demonstrated all the advertised influences, and frontman Kobi Oz was quite entertaining both visually, in his plaid pants, t-shirt, keffiyeh, and mohawk, and musically, with his darkly humorous lyrics and engaging banter.  Teapacks represented Israel in the 2007 Eurovision song contest with "Push the Button," which may be their most darkly humorous song of all:

They played this song more intensely than in the video clip, achieving a sound not far removed from Rage Against the Machine.  (In another song, one of the guitarists played a very Tom Morello-like solo.)  As a keyboardist and sometime accordionist myself, I was happy to see the keyboardist double on accordion at times.  For the show's climax Oz got the audience dancing a giant hora circle dance.  It was a fun night out for an unbeatable price.

Then today (Saturday), I took my son to a bar mitzvah for one of his friends.  (See my tie blog to see what ties we wore.)  The synagogue is new, beautifully constructed and furnished with lots of wood, skylights, two Llenroc walls, and generous windows with a view of Cayuga Lake.  Noshing on bagels and lox after the ceremony and admiring the spread, I was reminded of a song that Dave Nachmanoff wrote on commission to celebrate one of the Jewish holy days.  He decided to make it usable for any Jewish holy day, which all have one thing in common (he said), and that is revealed in the chorus (which I'm reproducing from memory because I can't find a recording of it, so the first lines may not be 100% correct, but the last ones are):

If we don't learn from history
Then history's bound to repeat
They tried to kill us
But we won
So let's eat!

Mazel tov!  Mrs. Veneer and I saw Dave Nachmanoff as Al Stewart's opening act, and then his accompanist, in December 2005.  But that's another story for another blog entry.