Day 6: March 23 - When Life Gives You Lemons, But No Toilet Paper…
If you’re like me, you’re carefully rationing your toilet paper. But what will you do when it goes out? These musicians don’t have the answers to that, but they know what to do with all those extra anvils. It’s music with weird instruments today!
Elisha Denburg - Fisher Price Laugh & Learn fun with Friends Musical Table
Toy Piano Composers are a Toronto-based collective of composers who engage audiences with creative and unusual concert programs. Fisher Price Laugh & Learn, by TPC member Elisha Denburg, is the opening track of their only album to date, a collection of their favorite chamber pieces from the 120+ pieces they’ve premiered. Delightfully playful, clever, and surprisingly touching, this track does what it says on the tin: learns fun with friends! Denburg’s score weaves a live Fisher-Price toy into colorful and tight chamber writing full of surprises, cadential twists, and a wonky Mozart quote. Played here by the Toy Piano Composers.
David Lang - Anvil Chorus
American composer David Lang has thought to prepare us for when we have to rebuild after this is all over. His solo percussion work, Anvil Chorus, took inspiration from the songs medieval blacksmiths used to coordinate hammer strikes when working on a single piece metal. A very steady, constant internal pulse was needed to keep the blacksmiths from wacking each other with their giant hammers and a melody helped them to keep that pulse The percussion sources their own ‘junk-metals’: resonant ones to provide the ‘melody’ and non-resonant ones to provide ‘accompaniment.” The percussionist has to be all of the blacksmiths at once, though they enter through the piece, all playing at different speeds, giving a cyclic and repetitive character to a gradual accumulation. Played here by Steven Schick.
Bjork - Solstice
Icelandic artist-extraordinaire Bjork commissioned the creation of a host of new instruments for her 2012 album, Biophilia, which examined natural cycles and technology. Solstices is based on the movement of the planets and heavenly bodies. This is realized by large, cylindrical pendulums with strings like a harp. The pendulum are activated by the Earth’s gravity and rotate so a plectrum can pluck different strings as the pendulums swing. Here is a video of Bjork performing live with them in Paris. Related, I met the artist who made the pendulums, Andy Cavatorta, when he came to my undergrad to speak. Him and his studio make some amazing instruments which you should check out. (David Lang also came to speak about his Songs after Solomon!)
Luigi Russolo - Awakening of a City
Early 20th-century Italian painter, composer, and instrument Luigi Russolo wished to bring real world, industrial sounds into the music hall. His 1913 manifesto, The Art of Noises, sought a liberation from pitch-centered music-making. To accomplish this, he created an arsenal of noise-machines, called intonarumori. These intonarumori mimicked noises from the real world which Russolo would then compose for as if they were traditional instruments. Awakening of a City uses eight of these noise-machines: howlers, roarers, cracklers, rubbers, bursters, hummers, gurglers, and whispers. Original recording by Luigi’s brother, Antonio, of Luigi Russolo playing hi intonarumori.
Patrick Watson - Beijing
Canadian (so many Canadians today!) musician (and the ensemble he fronts under the same name) are known for their experimental music. Here, Watson plays a bicycle in the backbeat of this track about waking up in someone else’s life in in Beijing. Definitely in the inde-rock tradition, but with a unique color and quirkiness. (Also, unintended connection between Russolo’s Awakening of a City and Beijing being about waking up in a strange city! I love when these threads appear!)