I met a five-year-old with the most exquisite taste
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
A couple of weeks ago I was visiting one of my favorite former mentors (though, can you call someone your “former” mentor if you still send them panicked emails like “Help I’ve been asked to write for a book and I have no idea how to handle this what should I do???”) who is parent to the most delightful five-year-old you will ever meet. Not only is this girl spunky and imaginative and observant, she also has the best taste in music of any small child I’ve ever met.
Some of her favorites, I’ve been told, are Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse macabre” and George Crumb’s Black Angels. A five-year-old who loves Black Angels! When I was a kid I went feral for “El Toreador” from Bizet’s Carmen because I was, apparently, basic as heck. The kids really are alright.
But her absolute favorite, her amused but weary parents told me, is Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. If she had her way, she’d listen to Rite of Spring on repeat all day every day, and so her parents have instituted an “Only one Rite of Spring a day in the house” rule.
ONLY ONE RITE OF SPRING A DAY. That is the funniest parenting rule I’ve ever heard of.
(I’ve been told that, as a result of this rule, she saves her single daily Rite of Spring for right before she goes to bed, and as someone whose college hype music was Liszt’s Totentanz, I feel such a strong kinship with this kid.)
Hearing about the “one Rite a day” rule made me extremely happy to be an adult who makes my own rules, because my preferred way to love music, like my Rite-loving young friend, is to listen to it nonstop, on repeat, for days if not weeks on end.
I went to an LA Phil concert where I heard, for the first time, Piazzolla’s Estaciones Porteñas, otherwise known as The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. (I also heard Gabriela Ortiz’ new ballet score, Revolución diamantina, which I also really loved but of which there are currently no recordings, which is always the downside to attending premieres.)
I freaking loved Piazzolla’s Four Seasons—particularly this Desyatnikov arrangement freely quoting Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (delightfully sprinkling bits of Vivaldi’s “Winter” in Piazzolla’s non-“Winter” movements)—which features liberal use of scratch tones and fun glissandi. It has so many of the elements I love about “Libertango”: the effortless languidness, the fever of almost nihilistic hedonism, the unapologetic sexiness of a tango beat. So of course I have been exercising my right as an adult with agency to listen to this piece againandagainandagain.
I have imprinted on Lara St. John’s performance with the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra and I have spent many, many hours just listening to this nonstop. If I were a child someone would have instituted an “Only one Piazzolla’s Four Seasons a day” rule by now but I’M A GROWNUP, I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT, HA HA HA!
In other news
Today’s newsletter is short because I am somewhat determined to finish this damn article I’m writing for VAN Magazine so I can get back to working on other urgent-ish things. When does one’s feelings about their career cease to be primarily made up of panic, I wonder?
I’m frantically working on said article—the challenge here is that in interviewing so many knowledgeable people for the piece, I’ve learned a lot that is simply never going to go into the article, because 1) there is too much information to pack into a single piece and 2) some percentage of what I’m learning from the interviews falls into the category one might call “gossip” and I have some journalistic standards, I think.
I also, hilariously, thought up to now that the reporter I’m working with from This American Life was doing a story in which I was a source for a different narrative, and only yesterday on a call did I realize that the story is about me.
“You didn’t know that?” he said, kindly but a little incredulously, when I expressed my surprise.
Nope! I did not know that, because I am apparently clueless! Anyway, between working on my own piece and also apparently being the story, I am trying to figure out how to also work on my own music while also working on a bunch of press material to promote said music in hopes of booking performances when there are only so many hours in a day and only so much my brain is capable of doing before demanding rest. It’s a blessing, truly, to be doing work I care about that other people value, invest in, and think is worthy of attention, but it’s also hard being a one-person shop.
Anyway. I am now blasting Piazzolla’s Four Seasons again, which might be one of the only things holding me together at this point. 🎹