This spring, one of the best-preserved Strads in existence will go up for auction at Sotheby’s. Built some time between 1700 and 1720, during the very best period of Stradivari’s work, the viola is a real rarity, one of only ten in existence. Maybe that justifies the starting price of $45 million. What does that prized strad actually sound like, you might wonder? Filmed by The New York Times, the clip above features David Aaron Carpenter (called “The Hottest Violist of the 21st Century”) playing Suite No. 3 in C by Johann Sebastian Bach. If you’re a viola aficionado, we would be curious to get your take on what you hear.
When I first entered college in the mid-‘90s, the phenomenon of pop culture studies in academia seemed like an exciting novelty, bound to the ethos of the Clinton years. Often incisive, occasionally frivolous, pop culture studies made academia fun again, and reinvigorated the world of scholarly publishing and college life in general. All manner of fandom ruled the day: we took classes in hip hop videos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alanis Morrissette redefined irony, and nearly everyone got hired right after graduation (see for reference the cult classic 1994 film PCU). These days I don’t need to tell you that the prospects for new grads are considerably reduced, but I’m very happy to find academic societies and journals still organized around TV shows, fantasy novels, and pop music. Today we bring you two examples from the world of Classic Rock & Roll Studies (to coin a term). First up we have BOSS, or “The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies.”
Springsteen Studies is not new. In fact, a massive Springsteen symposium called “Glory Days”—jointly sponsored by Virginia Tech, Penn State, and Monmouth University—has taken place twice in West Long Branch, New Jersey since 2005 and is currently preparing for its next event. BOSS, however, only just emerged, the first scholarly Springsteen journal ever published. The first issue will appear in June of this year, and the editors are now soliciting 15 to 25 page academic articles for their January, 2015 issue. Describing themselves as a “scholarly space for Springsteen Studies in the contemporary academy,” BOSS seeks “broad interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to Springsteen’s songwriting, performance, and fan community.” Springsteen scholars: check the BOSS site for deadlines and contact info.
Unlike most scholarly journals, BOSS is open-access, so fans and admirers of all kinds can read the sure-to-be fascinating discussions it fosters as it works toward securing “a place for Springsteen Studies in the contemporary academy.” Springsteen Studies’ advocacy appears to be working—Rutgers University plans to add a Springsteen theology class, covering Springsteen’s entire discography, and other institutions like Princeton and the University of Rochester have offered Springsteen courses in the past.
In another first for a specialized pop culture field, the first-ever academic conference on the work of Pink Floyd will be held this coming April 13 at Princeton University. Called “Pink Floyd: Sound, Sight, and Structure,” the event promises to be a multi-media extravaganza, featuring as its keynote speaker Grammy-award winning Pink Floyd producer and engineer James Guthrie. (See Guthrie and others discuss the production of the surround-sound Super Audio CD of Wish You Were Here in the video above). In addition to Guthrie’s talk, and his surround sound mix of the band’s music, the conference will offer “live compositions and arrangements inspired by Pink Floyd’s music,” an “exhibition of Pink Floyd covers and art,” and a screening of The Wall. Papers include “The Visual Music of Pink Floyd,” “Space and Repetition in David Gilmour’s Guitar Solos,” and “Several Species of Small Furry Animals: The Genius of Early Floyd.” Admission is free, but you’ll need to RSVP to get in. The town of Princeton will join in the festivities with “Outside the Wall,” a series of events and specials on drinks, dining, art, and music.
While these events and publications may seem to locate pop culture studies squarely in New Jersey, those interested can find conferences all over the world, in fact. A good place to start is the site of the PCA (“Pop Culture Association”), which hosts its annual conference next month in Chicago, and the International Conference on Media and Popular Culture will be held this May in Vienna. Pop culture and media studies still seem to me to be particular products of the optimistic ‘90s (due to my own vintage, no doubt), but it appears these academic fields are thriving, despite the vastly different economic climate we now live in, with its no-fun, belt-tightening effects on higher ed across the board.
Just over a century after the first radio performance of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Il Pagliacci,” and Pietro Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” were broadcast live from the Metropolitan Opera House in 1910, the World Concert Hall has made it its mission to bring free live classical concerts to the world. The website contains a collection of links to free radio performances each week, allowing listeners to tune into live concerts performed across the globe. You can browse performances according to the site’s schedule, or choose from a selection of classical radio stations in a large number of countries. As you might expect, the U.S has the largest selection by far, with 80 stations. But for more curious music lovers, World Concert Hall also offers a taste of what other fans are listening to in other countries, like China, Japan, and Israel.
I can think of very few tasteful phenomena to have come to prominence in the seventies, but David Bowie’s albums and Dick Cavett’s talk shows both make the short list. In the middle of that decade, Bowie certainly made the television rounds; we previously featured his 1975 appearance opposite Cher, and today we have his appearance opposite Cavett from the previous year. “David Bowie is a superstar in a category that has never actually been defined,” says the host about the rocker, to audience cheers, “because as soon as a critic tries to say what he is, he changes, like a chameleon.” It seems that Bowie, then at the height of his self-transformative tendencies, could reduce even the most eloquent man on television to that not-quite-accurate cliché. As the former host told Esquire thirty years after this broadcast, “Doesn’t a chameleon exert tremendous energy to become indistinguishable from its environment?”
Yet Cavett ultimately holds his own with Bowie, a feat I doubt many of the rest of us could pull off then or now. The appearance involves more than just music; while Bowie does perform, he also sits down to talk, something that his fans hadn’t yet seen him do in 1974. To many of them, he remained for the most part a mystery, albeit an astutely rocking one. “Who is he? What is he?” Cavett rhetorically asks the crowd. “Man? Woman? Robot?” In the event, they discuss his school days, his ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway, the unforgettable Diamond Dogs cover art, his step back from “glitter,” why other people would have feared interviewing him, and whether he pictures himself at sixty (in the far-flung year of 2007). How easy to forget, in this age when we can often converse with our idols by merely sending them an @ reply on Twitter, how much a showman like Bowie could leave to our imaginations. He remains admirably secretive by today’s standards, but back in the seventies, anything he said would have come as a revelation — especially if prompted by no less artful a conversationalist.
During a visit to Vanderbilt University last year, Billy Joel fielded a question from a freshman, Michel Pollack. To paraphrase: “My favorite song of yours is New York State of Mind. Can I play it for you on the piano while you sing?” To which Joel replied, “Ok.” And off they went. It’s a lovely impromptu moment. But it was a little too much for Pollack. A little overwhelmed by the whole experience, he got a 69 on his calculus exam the next day. But who could blame him. We have more impromptu musical moments below.
The Chorus Project is the sort of opportunity parents dream about—talent-based, high profile, and helmed by visionary adults in tune with teenagers’ emotional and pre-professional needs. The select few—there are 39, leading one to wonder what happened to number 40—range in age from 14–18. They hail from a variety of backgrounds, coming together after school and over the summer to sing, and ultimately record, choral arrangements of rock and pop hits, orchestrated by well known musicians. The 1970s Langley Schools Music Project is a big influence, as is the television show Glee.
Their fresh-faced, orthodontia-enhanced take on the David Byrne / St.Vincent collaboration “Who,” above, embodies the Chorus Project approach, garnering St. Vincent’s stamp, or rather, Tweet, of approval.
Byrne recently advised young musicans to expect that retaining freedom and creative control means taking a financial hit. How comforting to find Chorus Project founder Lauren Bromley Hodge ennumerating that path’s alternate rewards:
Music is a universal language, crossing cultural and income barriers. Singing in a chorus creates community, friendship and trust. In a society where arts based educational opportunities are drastically reduced and threatened, this music project gives young singers the chance to learn about singing, performing and recording from musicians and teachers.
Cultural and income barriers aren’t the only boundaries music transcends. As one Metafilter user remarked after viewing the Chorus Project’s spin on The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset,” arranged by the dBs’ Chris Stamey:
Can someone let that adolescent boy singing lead on “Waterloo Sunset” know that my sixteen year-old self called and his heart is broken from the crush he’ll never be able to say hello to?
Because sob.
See, kids? You don’t need leather pants or facial hair to be cool!
My favorite Chorus Project performance thusfar is their cover of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” The purity of those opening bars reminded me of high school and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in equal parts. I dug the cinder blocks in the background. I appreciated the deep look of concentration upon soloist Presyce Baez’s face, as well as the catlike, canary-stuffed expression of his partner, Ally Copenhaver, biding her time until the one-and-a-half minute mark when… leapin’ lizards! That kid’s got an impressive set of pipes, making it all the more gratifying to see her showing up in a supporting capacity elsewhere in her chorus’s oeuvre.
There may be no more distinguished lecture series in the arts than Harvard’s Norton lectures, named for celebrated professor, president, and editor of the Harvard Classics, Charles Eliot Norton. Since 1925, the Norton Professorship in Poetry—taken broadly to mean “poetic expression in language, music, or fine arts”—has gone to one respected artist per year, who then delivers a series of six talks during their tenure. We’ve previously featured Norton lectures from 1967–68 by Jorge Luis Borges and 1972–73 by Leonard Bernstein. Today we bring you the first three lectures from this year’s Norton Professor of Poetry, Herbie Hancock. Hancock delivers his fifth lecture today (perhaps even as you read this) and his sixth and final on Monday, March 31. The glories of Youtube mean we don’t have to wait around for transcript publication or DVDs, though perhaps they’re on the way as well.
The choice of Herbie Hancock as this year’s Norton Professor of Poetry seems an overdue affirmation of one of the country’s greatest artistic innovators of its most unique of cultural forms. The first jazz composer and musician—and the first African American—to hold the professorship, Hancock brings an eclectic perspective to the post. His topic: “The Ethics of Jazz.” Given his emergence on the world stage as part of Miles Davis’ 1964–68 Second Great Quartet, his first lecture (top) is aptly titled “The Wisdom of Miles Davis.” Given his swerve into jazz fusion, synth-jazz and electro in the 70s and 80s, following Davis’ Bitches Brew revolution, his second (below) is called “Breaking the Rules.”
Notoriously wordy cultural critic Homi Bhabha, a Norton committee member, introduces Hancock in the first lecture. If you’d rather skip his speech, Hancock begins at 9:10 with his own introduction of himself, as a “musician, spouse, father, teacher, friend, Buddhist, American, World Citizen, Peace Advocate, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz” and, centrally, “a human being.” Hancock’s mention of his global peace advocacy is significant, given the subject of his third talk, “Cultural Diplomacy and the Voice of Freedom” (below). His mention of the role of teacher is timely, since he joined UCLA’s music department as a professor in jazz last year (along with fellow Davis Quintet alumnus Wayne Shorter). Always an early adopter, pushing music in new directions, Hancock calls his fourth talk “Innovation and New Technologies” (who can forget his embrace of the keytar?). His identity as a Buddhist is central to his talk today, “Buddhism and Creativity,” and his final talk is enigmatically titled “Once Upon a Time….” Find all of the lectures on this page.
Hancock’s last identification in his intro—“human being”—“may seem obvious,” he says, but it’s “all-encompassing.” He invokes his own multiple identities to begin a discussion on the “one-dimensional” self-presentations we’re each encouraged to adopt—defining ourselves in one or two restrictive ways and not “being open to the myriad opportunities that are available on the other side of the fortress.” Hancock, a warm, friendly communicator and a proponent of “multidimensional thinking,” frames his “ethics of jazz” as spilling over the fortress walls of his identity as a musician and becoming part of his broadly humanist views on universal problems of violence, apathy, cruelty, and environmental degradation. He calls each of his lectures a “set,” and his first two are carefully prepared talks in which his life in jazz provides a backdrop for his wide-ranging philosophy. So far, there’s nary a keytar in sight.
In 1968, Pink Floyd’s relationship with increasingly drug-addled lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Syd Barrett unraveled. Though Barrett’s departure wasn’t officially announced until April, that band had already begun, by necessity, performing and recording without him late the previous year, adding guitarist David Gilmour to the lineup to supplant Syd’s erratic performances. In February of ’68 the band appeared minus Syd on a French live-music program called Baton Rouge. Sixties music blog A Dandy in Aspic describes the show as capturing during its year-long run “some of the best British Mod/Psych bands at their peak,” including The Small Faces, The Moody Blues, and the Yardbirds, with Jimmy Page.
This Floyd footage, however, is especially significant for its portrait of the band finding its way through the trauma of its chief architect’s mental demise, with a seemingly awkward Gilmour taking over: “It still sounds great, but the band are visibly uncomfortable. Roger Waters’ dark psychedelic gem ‘Set The Controls For the Heart Of The Sun’ sounds amazing, and ‘Let there Be [More] Light’ is an indication of Pink Floyd’s new, post-Syd direction.”
In addition to those two songs from their upcoming second album A Saucerful of Secrets, the band plays two songs from their debut, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The weird mystical chant “Astronomy Domine” doesn’t suffer at all, since keyboardist Richard Wright sang the lead vocals on the album version and does so again here. David Gilmour takes over the lead for Barrett’s “Flaming,” which is such a Syd song, with its disturbing and childlike lyrics and loopy vocal melody, that his absence becomes noticeable. But it comes off fine, if somewhat stiff, and the song remained in their set for years afterward.
For more classic psychedelic performances from the 1967–68 Baton Rouge, head over to A Dandy in Aspic.
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