06/21/2018: Keep on Listening to great music!

In this week’s show, host Lynn Vartan talks about one of her favorite topics again - music!  Lynn profiles the music of composer David Lang and then shares some more work music crossover artists.

Transcript

[00:00:02] Hey everyone this is Lynn Vartan and you are listening to the A.P.E.X Hour on KSUU Thunder 91.1. In this show you get more personal time with the guests who visit Southern Utah University from all over. Learning more about their stories and opinions beyond their presentations onstage. We will also give you some new music to listen to and hope to turn you on to new sounds. And you can find us here every Thursday at 3:00 p.m. or on the web at suu.edu/apex. But for now welcome to this week's show here on Thunder 91.1.

[00:00:50] All right well welcome everybody. It's the A.P.E.X Hour. This is Lynn Vartan and you are listening to KSUU Thunder 91.1. So what are we up to today. Today is here in the studio. The last one of the last weeks of June it's actually the longest day of June we're getting to the end June 21st 2018 and today I'm going to dig into some more music with you. I love sharing music as many of you know. And this week I'm going to do two things. One thing is do a composer profile kind of a spotlight on a composer that I'm really excited about. And then we're going to dig into more of some of that world music crossover stuff that I love so the reason I wanted to do this composer Spotlight is because I wanted to turn everyone on to something really cool that Spotify does. And if you don't currently have a Spotify account you can definitely take a look and get one of the free accounts but they do something that is called a composer weekly. And basically it's a weekly playlist that a composer a living composer - they've done some on some of the classical composers like Mozart for example- but normally it's living composers who create a playlist of their music. And I think that's really cool because basically the composer puts together pieces that they want to introduce and that they want to talk about and that they want to be in this play and it happens every single week. So again it's the Spotify list that's called composer weekly. And you can subscribe to that playlist or just check out whatever is on there and it comes out each week. And one of the things that they do is they have the composer themselves do a little verbal introduction. And so I have that ready to play for you. For the composer I've chosen this spot like so the composer that we're going to talk about today I'm going to play probably five or six pieces from him is a composer called David Lang. David Lang is a Pulitzer Prize winning composer. He is a modern classical music composer but he does a lot of interesting music. I would say that he's known for really innovative piano music really interesting vocal music. And also some great things with strings some Suu you know orchestra stuff as well. But the things that I like of his of his compositions are are his piano music and his vocal music which we're going to listen to some of. But to get started, let's hear David Lang speak in his own words about this composer's playlist so here's David Lang talking about his music.

[00:03:41] Happy to be the featured composer on this composer's weekly playlist. I chose everything on this playlist myself. I did this just for you. I tried to give you a range of things that I've been doing so I've been writing music for over 50 years now which is hard to believe but most of the stuff here is pretty recent because I wanted to let you know what I've been up to in the last few years I've been reading a huge amount of vocal music so there's a bunch of that represented here there's some songs there's some choral things there's a little bit from little natural passion which is the piece that I wrote that won the Pulitzer Prize. There's also some films that I've done here. There's music from the films "youth', "the great beauty", "the woodman's". Really hope you like those and there's also a range of just the kinds of things that you know classical composers there's orchestra music and chamber music and there's even a new track here a piece called forced Mirch that I did for the crash ensemble in Dublin and we recorded it in YouTube's old studio which was fantastic and that's going to be coming out on a CD on cantaloupe in the spring. And I really hope you enjoy this playlist and have fun.

[00:04:59] All right so that's David Lange the composer that we're going to be listening to today. And as you heard he has a wide variety of things and it's absolutely amazing that he has been playing music and writing music for as he said over 50 years. I kind of can't even believe it because I think his music sounds really fresh and really new. And of course he's writing right now as well. He's just got a great ear for the modern sound and a great sense of that. And I just think it's really interesting music. So again if you're interested those are the Spotify composer weekly segments it's a composer weekly playlist curated by the composers. OK so let's dig into David Lang's music. The first piece I'm not obviously we're not going to play everything from the play list but the first piece I'm going to play for you. As I said we're going to play about five or six pieces. Is a piano piece and the piece is the third movement from a group of pieces called Memory pieces. And this third movement is called Wed. It's about five minutes. It's very meditative. A little bit melancholy perhaps some people would describe it as spiritual. I first heard about these pieces because a friend of mine who is a pianist Danny Hould Danny if you're listening Hey and who's come out to Utah and done some concerts out here and were actually planning some concerts in Palm Springs together later this year. But he has recorded a little bit of this. David Lang these memory pieces and there are several of them and I'd like to read you a little bit of the program note Suu you know. Again they're called Memory pieces and the individual movements are cage Spartan arcs where the one you're going to hear grind diet coke cello wiggle and beat. So really interesting titles. This is what David Lang the composer writes about the pieces and he says one of the horrifying things about growing older is that your friends don't all grow older with you. People grow sick and they die. You watch you try to comfort them. How long can you hold on to the sound of a voice a memory of a strange event a bittersweet feeling or a silly story. He says that he was friends he says I was friends with all the dedicatees of the inclose set of pieces. Some were closer friends and others and I have a very personal memories of my dealings with them that I don't want to fade. Each of these little pieces highlights some aspect of my relationship with each friend. I hope this will help me hold on to these memories just a little while longer. So this is when the third movement from David Lang Memory Pieces.

[00:12:34] All right. So that was memory pieces the third movement from memory pieces which is called Wed, the composer is David Lang. This is Lynn Vartan and this is the A.P.E.X Hour KSUU Thunder 91.1. The next song by David Lang that I'd like to play for you is a song called "This was written by hand". It's longer so I'm not going to actually play the whole thing because I want to make sure to get you a sampling of a lot of his music. "This is written by hand" is another piano piece. It's a little bit different. And this is what David Lang has to say about that piece. He says I was taught to write music with a pencil. I remember those days so well I would sit patiently at my desk singing the music to myself and then writing it down if I was tense about a project or a deadline. I would hold the pencil so tight that I would get blisters on my fingers and my arm would cramp up and take weeks to recover. Writing music was an intensely physical activity. I got my first computer in 1993 and I have not written music with a pencil ever since. But I often wonder how or if the means of my writing had any effect on the writing itself. I wrote this piano piece to find out. So it's kind of an interesting concept seeing if he can remember what writing by hand is like so this is the piano piece called "This was written by hand" by David Lang.

[00:17:49] So that was "this is written by hand" by David Lang and again it's part of a longer work. So if you're interested in listening to more of it you definitely can check it out. David Lang the composer that we're listening to for the first half of this show that piece he was describing or experiencing what it felt like to write by hand as he learned writing by pencil and then transferred to the computer later. But you can hear in his music especially in his piano music. That sense of openness and there's a little bit of melancholy I imagine that his music is can be amazing with dance for example so any aspiring choral choreographers out there definitely take a listen to some of the music especially the piano music of David Lang. It's really great stuff. I just find it to be meditative and spacious but yet has a lot of great modern harmonies in it.

[00:18:44] OK so now I'd like to move on to some vocal music of David I'm just got a few more that I'd like to play for you. This song is called "Just" and it's from the film "youth". He mentioned as you heard earlier in the broadcast that he has all kinds of things in this playlist. And again this is the Spotify playlist called composer weekly featuring David Lang and this song just again is also a longer work. We're going to not listen to all of it we'll take a listen to some of it. And one of the things that's interesting about his vocal music is that there's a similarity to the piano music. You'll hear the same kind of linear or melodic line that kind of layers over and over. And he also has a program note for this piece and one other thing to listen for in his music is he has a great sense of sort of Baltic choral qualities and Eastern European sort of vocal sounds in it. But this is the program note for this piece and it tells you a little more about what it's about. "Just a setting of text I made by finding certain things in the song of songs. The original text is of course the most passionate and erotic of the ancient Jewish books and it is always strange to encounter it in the Bible. In 2008 I wrote a choral piece called for love is strong in which I made a similar text from the song of songs trying to use the words to see through the relationship between the man and the woman in the story to the relationship between man and God according to Jewish tradition. The Song of Songs is a metaphor for our passion for the Eternal. So the words themselves become very important." He goes on to say that for his text he listed everything personal or owned that is attributed to the man and to the woman. To clarify who is speaking. He starts each phrase of his with just your and each phrase of hers with and my. It is interesting that in a text about love that is shared there are only seven instances of our so it's a really interesting take on the Song of Solomon. But the song is called "Just" the composer is David Lang.

[00:24:30] OK so that song that you're hearing again it goes on and that song is called Just and it's after the song of songs and the movie it goes with it's called "Youth" and the composer is David Lang and you're listening to the A.P.E.X Hour. This is Lynn Vartan and this is KSUU Thunder 91.1 we're doing a little composer's spotlight of David Lang and I have two more of his to play and then we're going to get into some wacky world music. The two remaining David Lang's songs both have that crossover element that I'm interested in. The first one is less obvious. This piece is called. It's from a series of pieces called "Death speaks" and this is the first one that's called "You will return" again the composer's David Lang and one of the things that's really interesting about this is he decided to look at him in classical music all the instances where death was attributed to a person or an entity or a personality. So he went through- Like for example Schubert's songs death and the Maiden and he went through the remaining Schubert pieces and found all the places where death was personified and and what he did was he took excerpts from 32 songs translating, them trimming them. And it's similar to something that he did with Little Match Girl Passion the piece that won him the Pulitzer Prize. And these death songs actually were originally meant to be on the same album with the Little Match Girl Passion. And so that's kind of the basis of the story. But what makes that crossover because you're probably thinking well that doesn't sound very crossover but then he asked a bunch of rock musicians to join him. So Bryce Dessner, Owen Pallett, Shara Worden. And then another composer Nico Muhly who I've mentioned on the show before who certainly is involved with classical music but is really open to incorporate elements of rock so he incorporated them into these into these different pieces. So he started thinking about indie rock and how it bumps up against classical music and this idea of how these some of these concepts of personifying death could fit very well and rock music also fit very well in classical music. So he said what would it be like to put together an ensemble of successful indeed composer performers and invite them back into classical music the world from which they sprang. So that's how he got these other people involved. So this is the one that has Shara Worden and involved with the piece.

[00:27:20] And again it's death speaks number one you will return by David Lang to All right David Lang and with Shara Worden as that piece is called you will return and it's the first movement from death speaks. And this is KSUU Thunder 91.1. My name is Lynn Vartan and this is the A.P.E.X Hour we're doing composer spotlight and I have one more little snippet and this is the last of the David Lang pieces. And it's also crossover. And the reason I want to play this one for you is because this piece is it's not a piece you can buy like you can't buy the performance materials you can't if you know it's for voice and cello and if you've got a cellist then you're a singer and you want to do this piece you can't. This arrangement is not available. It's unusual for classical music to not be able to perform a piece. And so I wanted to give a little bit of a snippet of it because it's kind of a special piece. The title is "Heroin" and it's originally the Lou Reed piece we're talking Velvet Underground and then David Lang arranged it for voice and cello. So again it's kind of this classical crossover into early rock n roll or alternative music and this is what David says ""Heroin" was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in 2002. At that time I was trying to think of moments in my life when I learned a lesson that turned out later to be important to me. I remembered that I had been a very nerdy classical music person who in high school got very interested in rock n roll. I thought I knew the kind of emotional narrative of each world. Classical music was for big noble thoughts and ideas. Rock'n'roll was for dancing and girls. Then I heard the Velvet Underground actually the first Velvet Underground song I heard was the dark and very disturbing Venus in Furs with a droning Viola and the crazy lyrics. I remember thinking that this music was dangerous and I never thought of any other music that way. This association of music and danger is something I've tried to capture many times in the years since for this song I wanted to see if I could recall that feeling of danger by setting Lou Reed's lyrics with my new music. Heroin was the heroin was the first song off that record that I had transformed this way. So just a little bit of it again it's a longer version of this song. But just to give you a little taste. This is heroin. David Lang from voice and cello.

[00:37:18] In the background there is the song Heroin written originally by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground and done and arranged for voice and cello by David Lang our composer spotlight here on the A.P.E.X Hour on KSUU Thunder 91.1 that's the end of our composers spotlight. Now I have some fun World music crossover stuff for you and we're just going to get right into it. I found out about this guy and his name is Qais Essar and he is an instrumentalist who plays the Afghan rabab which is a very very old instrument very old string instrument but I heard he was classically trained and then turned this into kind of avant garde pop if you will. So it's a really sort of remaking of this instrument. The song is called "the Ghost you love the most". And he has this quote that describes the song for him. He says "I imagine waking up on the other side feels very much like the sensation you feel when you place your face on the cool side of a pillow." So he captures this feeling of simple pleasure perfectly transforms into this sort of lighter interesting pop song. He has four albums that have all been very very popular and he's gotten a bunch of different nominations for his use of this music and film. But let's have a listen to "the ghost you love the most" on rabab by Qais Essar.

[00:42:40] That's the tail end of "the ghost you love most" by Qais Essar. And that instrument is a rabab. And yeah it's an Afghan instrument. And I think he does a really cool job of bringing that kind of into sort of modern pop music. Moving on this next song I have for you is called Africa La by Beto Villares and Beto is a Brazilian producer and composer. He's done a ton in fact he was- I know him because he was one of the producers on the album by CeU who I really like and I'm really got more into his music. He's got a lot of different things and involved in it. And this is a song called Africa La and it's got influences from everywhere Brazil, it's got some movie kind of sounds it's got a little bit of jazz and Bill Evans It's got a little bit of hip hop and he's just got a lot of different kinds of sounds that are in this. And yes have a listen. KSUU Thunder 91.1 this is Africa La

[00:47:40] All right well that song was Africa La and the artist is Beto Villares great producer songwriter and Brazilian musician. You're listening to the A.P.E.X Hour This is Lynn Vartan KSUU Thunder 91.1. Moving on this group that I'm going to play for you now. I just love they're called Rupa and the April Fishes and the song we're going to hear is C'est Moi and they're considered a global alternative group again the second half of the show is all world music with some kind of crossover type influence they're based in San Francisco. And the group says that their songs are a mixture of size styles ranging from jazz to punk to reggae to chanson French song style with lyrics in multiple languages French Spanish and English. They began as a duo they've come together as a group. They started in clubs and they have a lot of different styles and influence. Their music is really multifaceted constantly sort of redefining genres. One funny thing is that their name derives from an old French saying that's kind of like April Fools. I guess it's an April Fool's tradition in France for people to stick paper fishes on the back of the unsuspecting.

[00:49:19] While the origin of the custom is questionable Rupa remarks one of the stories is that when a French king changed to the Roman calendar from the pagan calendar that was in that that had been used at the time some people still wanted to celebrate the new year in April. So these are the people who would give the fishes the April fish to celebrate the beginning of the new year. Now for the group that has come they've sort of turned it a little bit more into a political commentary and you can read more about that. If you're interested. But that's kind of the origin of their name which I didn't know until I was researching for today's show. So Rupa and the April Fishes and this song is called C'est Moi.

[00:54:04] That was Rupa and the April Fishes the song is called C'est Moi and it's just kind of a party. I don't know I just think it's very like Cirque du Soleil or it just has this kind of magical playful quality. So let's keep the party going. I have one song left and this is just fun. It's jazz. It's fun. The artist is Nnenna Freelon world renowned jazz singer composer producer arranger Grammy nominee the whole deal. But the song is called "better than anything" and here we are on the longest day of the year. And what could be better than anything all the great things about summer. So KSUU Thunder 91.1 "better than anything".

[00:59:20] And that is all the time we have today. Thanks so much for listening. If you think of it please leave us a review for the podcast either on iTunes or Google Play or wherever you get your podcast. We would love to get the news out there of all the stuff we're doing here on the A.P.E.X Hour. And again enjoy this longest day of the year. And we'll see you next week.

[00:59:45] Thanks so much for listening to the A.P.E.X Hour here on KSUU Thunder 91.1. Come find us again next Thursday at 3pm for more conversations with the visiting guests at Southern Utah University and new music to discover for your next playlist. And in the meantime we would love to see you at our events on campus. Find out more check out suu.edu/apex Until next week. This is Lynn Vartan saying goodbye from the A.P.E.X Hour here on Thunder 91.1.