On the radio again

Yesterday I had radio in the car tuned to the local classical station and I just had to smile, remembering my post from the other day. What was playing? That old warhorse, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto....

On the radio

I've had a long love-hate relationship with classical radio. When I was growing up in a small town in Iowa it was the only way to get exposure to new concert music. Nobody believes me, but for most of the time I was growing up there was no record store in my home town, and of course this was long before iTunes and Spotify (or the web, or digital recording, for that matter). Listening to an unfamiliar orchestral composition meant driving 45 minutes to buy a cassette tape, so I would spend hours listening to Minnesota Public Radio. And I had no idea how lucky I was; MPR remains to this day by far the best-programmed classical radio I've ever come across.

Since then I've lived in several upscale media markets, but classical programming on the radio has been, for the most part, extremely disappointing: endless forgettable baroque recordings, tedious repeats of the warhorses of the repetoire, a skittish approach to anything written after 1900, and lame DJs who seem to know nothing about the music they're playing. (Embarrassingly ignorant compared to, say, the sonic nerds DJing at the average college radio station.)

But sooner or later I always wind up craving the local station for the clock alarm or driving music, and so after swearing off the low end of the FM dial for a while I eventually always tune back in. Fortunately, a formerly commercial classical station in the Bay Area (few playlists are more banal than the rotation of a commercial classical station!) has switched to a listener-supported format, and these days it's not bad.

Of course, in this day and age I can easily access a huge cross-section of the "classical" repetoire on line. Still, I find myself fascinated by the radio stations. A big part of it is how random the programming of the average "classical" station is. Almost every other format on the dial is meticulously targeted. Multiple subsegments of pop, adult contemporary, MOR, oldies, hip-hop, high-wattage smooth jazz versus low-wattage late-night bebop -- most music stations deliver reliable product, and often with a great deal of wit and depth in their stylistically-focused selections.

The classical radio playlist, on the other hand, is usually a ridiculous pastiche. In one sitting you can hear a baroque dance suite, light 19th-century piano music, maybe a single movement of a Mozart symphony, a contemporary film theme arranged for guitar, a warhorse of a Tchaikovsky piano concerto or a Mendelssohn violin concerto, and so on. Historically and stylistically speaking, the classical station is far more eclectic than a station that played, for example, Britney Spears followed by Dixieland followed by Kraftwerk followed by Bing Crosby followed by Radiohead followed by... well, you get the idea. The sloppiest Pandora channel has more coherence than the typical classical FM playlist.

And yet, even though I periodically give up in despair, I always wind up tuning in again sooner or later. Maybe I'm fascinated by 400 years of Western culture's essential musical heritage being neglected and forgotten to a degree that would never be tolerated for Shakespeare or Van Gogh or Rodin. Maybe I'm drawn to train wrecks. And maybe it's just that I love the music and the repertoire as a whole. But eventually I always find myself sitting behind the wheel in traffic, listening to a DJ who seems to know nothing about music introduce a piece in mangled French or German with information so minimal that it would be unacceptable in the most basic music appreciation class. I miss MPR, but hope springs eternal that someday I'll find something just as good somewhere in the lower frequencies of the local FM market.

Limited resources

Prior to my recent round of music blogging, the last time I had really recorded music was in the late 90s. Now I'm starting to experiment with all the advances in music technology that have taken place since then, and I feel like a technological caveman who's just been thawed out of a block of ice.

Right now I'm sitting in a villa in a Balinese suburb with a laptop, a pair of headphones, and a few pieces of very inexpensive hardware and software, and I'm able to write, record, and share original music. By current standards I'm working with very limited resources, but still, this is pretty neat.

Ya gotta love the 21st century....

Notes from an Open Window

Music has always been a central part of my life –- at least until I started medical training. For most of my life I couldn't have imagined music not being a part of every day, and for most of my career I couldn't have imagined music not being part of my livelihood. But training to be a doctor has a way of taking over your life and over the past decade the musical part of my life has dwindled to occasional composing, occasional arranging, occasional playing, and finally to nothing at all.

Last year I began feeling the loss more acutely than ever before, and in the past few months I finally started to take some steps to get music back into my life. Oddly enough, though, I found it hard to simply start playing or writing again. After so many years of training so hard and earning my living in the arts, I found it frustrating to approach it as a part-time amateur. I bought my first keyboard instrument in 15 years, but playing it was marred by my excruciating rustiness. Sitting down to attempt pieces I could once play fluently, I could now barely get my fingers to play the first few notes. Of course, every musician experiences being out of practice after being away from the routine, but this was a pretty extreme case.

I tried to persevere, not beating myself up or regretting past choices, and trying to play as best I could for the sheer joy of it. Then last month while on vacation we visited friends who are professional ballet dancers in Sweden. For the better part of a week we went to their performances and rehearsals, hung out in the opera house, attended the symphony, and met their friends, also professional artists, whose life revolves around art and music and planning the next big performance. And I was transported. It took me straight back to the days when I, too, spent all my time in the theater or studio or practice room. The experience inspired me, and I came back home determined to make music once again an integral part of my life.

But then there's this pesky residency: 80-hour weeks, 30-hour shifts, night shifts alternating with day shifts. Forget a regular daily practice schedule; it's pretty difficult to have a regular daily anything. I needed to find a way to somehow keep me in touch with music while I finish this overwhelming, all-encompassing medical experience.

What I came up with was to start a companion to this blog: a music blog. But not a blog about music. I'm going to try to blog using music. Each post will be a piece of music, whether it's an original song or composition, a re-recording of my old music, an original recording of existing music, or something else. As much as possible I want to present my own originals, but I'm constrained by fearsome time restraints and the disastrously atrophied state of my musical skills. Still, even if I can post a few interesting bars from time to time I think it will be rewarding for myself (and perhaps a few dedicated listeners), and I have a hunch that over time the musical choices will start to tell a story.

I'm still going to maintain this blog: medicine remains pretty darn interesting, at least to me. But when you've read enough here at Until Proven Otherwise, plug in your speakers or headphones and check out the latest at Notes from an Open Window. The very first post is up now (a revision and new recording of a piece I wrote 20 years ago), and we'll see where things go from there.

If I only had a brain

The process of packing, sorting, organizing, and/or discarding my possessions for the upcoming move to the West Coast is causing many relics of past lives to float to the surface. For example, this afternoon I came across two bars of "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz arranged for theater pit orchestra in my hand.

Once upon a time I worked as a music copyist for the Fifth Avenue Theatre in Seattle when the big musicals would come to town. The numbers were often edited for the requirements of local choreography, etc. and needed minor (or major) re-arranging. In this case the song was cut short, requiring two new final measures that exactly matched the existing arrangement. It was the end of the day, everyone wanted to go home, and the number was being rehearsed in the morning, so I volunteered to do it. (The arranging goes quickly but players' parts have to be prepared for the entire orchestra, which is the time-consuming part, even if it's only two bars.)

Anyway, my two measures saved the day (or at least saved my boss some time that evening) and it turned out to be be my big break in theatrical arranging. I got to do more and more work on subsequent shows, which became a big part of my arranging work in those days when I was composing and arranging professionally.

It was really fun work, too. The shows' original scores were done by the old Broadway pros and I had to seamlessly match the new material with the classic old arrangements. It's a strange gig because -- even more than film scoring -- the better you do your job, the more imperceptible your work should be. However, I would sit up in the balcony during a rehearsal or performance and when, during a dance number, the romantic ballad would appear as a tango, I had the satisfaction of knowing that the change was my work but hoping that to the rest of the audience it all sounded like the original score.