Concertos and word games
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
I have spent the majority of my life being busy and overstretched, so nothing tells me “things are back!!!” like feeling stressed once again! The past few weeks have had me going “oh no oh no oh no how am I going to get everything done” which, while not pleasant per se, is a nice-ish change from 2+ years of going “when will my career come back from the war.”
The Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel concerto project continues trucking along, and I wish I could share every little update with you all, but 1) that would not be cool to Patricia and 2) I don’t know if anyone will be as psyched about repeated iterations of the same passage as I am.
In other concerto news, Samantha Ege this week is premiering a newly orchestrated version of an almost-lost piano concerto by Helen Hagan. This Washington Post article is a really great summary of the project. And next month, the LA Phil premieres a piano concerto arranged from Florence Price’s Fantasie Nègre No. 1.
I find this all very curious and promising, because these premieres indicate precedence—and hopefully, demand!—for the concept of new piano concertos based on the works of marginalized composers. A little naysaying voice in my brain has perpetually gone “what if this concept is really weird, though?” with the FMH concerto project and evidence is emerging that the concept is totally not weird!
I also found Ege’s interview in the Washington Post article really insightful and elucidating; among other things, she talks about her personal experience finding and studying a work like Hagan’s concerto:
Now, because I’m a pianist, this immediately caught my interest. And I find that, because I’m a historian and a pianist, it brings a deeper level of connection, where I learn about the biographical side, but I also get to hear these women almost speak through my fingers as a pianist. I get to know them on a more personal and emotional level.
I feel this so hard and it’s so nice to know I’m not the only person who’s experienced this.
For a teensy sneak peek at the Hagan concerto, check out this short video:
Finally! This past weekend I went to my first LA Phil concert of the season—I am coming to really truly appreciate whoever is doing their programming/the exec board allowing whoever is doing the programming to do their own thing, because I am continually blown away by the new music they do. (“New” in this case meaning both newly composed music from the past five years, and new-to-most-audiences music, which sometimes means newly surfaced works by marginalized composers.)
I really enjoyed Gabriela Ortiz’ Kauyumari, which built into a jaunty perpetual-motion extravaganza that had the elderly lady next to me dancing in her seat. You know the music’s good when it’s got the classical music seniors jamming.
Possibly my favorite piece on the program was Arturo Márquez’ Fandango, a violin concerto written for and performed by Anne Akiko Meyers. IT WAS SO GOOD. I happily and shamelessly clapped at the end of the first movement because I just had to express how much I liked it. The second movement was especially delightful because slow movements, to me, are so hit-or-miss; this one felt to me like a fatalistic slow burn with a steel core, a sexually charged march to the scaffold.
The LA Phil has the last movement of Fandango on their Youtube channel and it’s pretty great, although it of course doesn’t capture the energy and oomph of being there in person.
Book of the Week
This was recommended to me by a friend who, in a podcast interview, was asked to name a notable book she’d read recently. She couldn’t think of any book besides this one and blurted out “People Love Dead Jews” which necessitated an immediate follow-up explanation.
Anyway, Dara Horn’s People Love Dead Jews is a big recommend from me, and is unfortunately increasingly relevant and necessary in our modern new era of anti-Semitism. It was a low-key paradigm shift for me, but felt very similar in insight and analysis to Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings. The book centers Jewish people and storytelling, and observes the chokehold that Christianity has on Western culture, down to how our psychologies and ideas of narrative (even in non-religious contexts) reflect specifically Christian ideology.
Horn also wields insight like a scalpel, demonstrating how Jewish figures and history are repurposed as convenient tools—wedges, scapegoats, inspiration/trauma porn—often in ways that elide the basic humanity of Jewish people. This book frankly should be required reading for more folks.
Articles I Enjoyed
Indeed, the sound of symphony orchestras appears to be growing more diverse across the country — even at the top organizations who were programming entire seasons without women just a few years ago. The latest Orchestra Repertoire Report, a statistical overview published by advocacy group the Institute for Composer Diversity, shows a 638% increase in music by women at our symphony halls in the past six years. The numbers for women composers of color — which started at next to nothing — is up a whopping 1425%.
What! Have! I! Been! Saying! This entire article was massively validating for me, because it confirms a lot of things I have been noticing and calling for. (This includes my “tart” heads up to classical orgs that the pandemic lockdowns signaled an opportunity for more diverse programming, which Joshua Kosman wrote about in 2021.)
David Grann: The White Darkness (The New Yorker)
Every way they turned, it seemed, there was a new obstacle: a boulder of ice, or a towering slope resembling a frozen waterfall, or a snow bridge extending over a crevasse. Some of the crevasses were “wide enough to swallow a car,” as Worsley put it. Others were only a few feet deep, but that was enough for someone to break an ankle or twist a knee. If one of the men were injured, there would be no place for miles for a rescue plane to land. An A.L.E. doctor had warned them, “You either get yourself out or you don’t get out.”
Heads up, this one is long; I am what some people call a “freakishly fast” reader, and this piece occupied me for most of a 60-minute flight. It’s so good though, and keeps you utterly hooked; it’s just quality long-form storytelling.
What I’m Listening To
Links here click through to Apple Music, which I much prefer, but Substack currently only supports embeds for Spotify, so the clickable in-lines are Spotify embeds.
I’ve been spending some time with Megan Thee Stallion’s new album, Traumazine, and by far my favorite track is “Her.” It 1) is a total banger and 2) is guaranteed to raise my confidence level a couple of notches every time. (Other favorite tracks: “Not Nice” and “Flip Flop”—the lyric “Flip-flop, lonely at the top / Everybody wasn’t meant to get off at your stop” feels oddly resonant.)
I’ve also been enjoying Betty Who’s new album, BIG! It’s not as immediately catchy-poppy as her previous albums, but it feels undeniably more her, so I dig it. The obvious recommended tracks are “WEEKEND” and “BLOW OUT MY CANDLE” (the latter has to be a reference to Rent, right? Betty Who went to Interlochen so there’s no way she’s unaware of “Light My Candle”) which are just two of the many bops on the album, however—!
I am weirdly obsessed with “HEY, IT’S BETTY” which is a sort of interstitial track in between full-length songs, but imho is a lost opportunity. There’s a big dramatic buildup (distortion! a defiant speech!) that goes right into the cool, quietly furious filtered a cappella bit at 0:50, which hints at the whole song that it could be but just ends abruptly?? Somewhere there is an experimental demo of this thing as a whole track on its own and I WANT IT.
Other Stuff
There’s a very good chance I am prematurely turning into an old person, because I have gotten really into word games and puzzles lately. (To be fair, I was already mostly there: I write letters with fountain pens and bottled inks and I play classical music. There was never any hope for me.)
Of course I have been playing Wordle for a while, and some fellow Wordle-players I know mentioned this game called Waffle, so of course I checked it out and got totally hooked. (In addition to the Daily Waffle, there’s also a Deluxe Waffle that changes once a week, and if like me you get addicted and one Waffle a day isn’t enough, the entire archive is playable.)
While playing through the Waffle archive, I hit one that was a collab with Squaredle…so of course I had to check it out, and yep, I’m sold.
After a couple of days playing through my Wordle-Waffle-Squaredle trifecta (I’ve gotten pretty good at beating them) I found myself hungering for more word puzzles, so I added Letterboxed to my routine. I also have found myself tacking on Spelling Bee, although I don’t have a NYT Games subscription and the game cuts you off when you hit certain points, so my m.o. is to try to get the pangram and then close the tab.
If I’ve blown through my word games for the day and need a quick hit, I’ll also pop over to Sudoku on NYT Games, solve the easy one in under 5 minutes, and then go on my merry way, feeling vaguely smart.
As far as online addictions go, word games and puzzles are maybe one of the more wholesome and harmless ones, and it sure beats doomscrolling.
Hit Tweets
Finally, the bathtub tray tweets are no longer the post of mine that has done the most numbers on Twitter! As far as hit tweets go, this is much more on brand for me and therefore less exasperating:
(This one has already migrated to Instagram, and the very frustrating thing is that I’m seeing a lot of people assume this was about the Queen of the Night aria, when it clearly states downthread that the aria in question is “Come scoglio” from Cosi fan tutte. Relevant xkcd.)
Also I fired off this, which might be the dumbest joke I’ve done in a long while:
As can be expected, I saw before muting this that there were already people who did not seem to understand that this was a joke. It is very tempting to tell these people that Key Playerson is real. 🎹