John Williams, summer vibes, and gluttony
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
The first time I attended the Amalfi Coast Music Festival, I found myself utterly bemused when, at the orientation for participating students, we were told about the Italian practice of riposo and sternly informed that there was to be zero practicing between noon and 4 PM every single day to respect the locals’ need for peace and quiet during their afternoon rest.
If you are any kind of highly accomplished pianist you likely got to that point by internalizing the panicked mantra that you must always be practicing, and the idea of practicing being off-limits for a prime four-hour chunk of the day was completely horrifying to most of us, especially as we were there to impress and extract insights from some of the most venerated pedagogues in the world.
Now, though, I think the Italians (and French, as I discovered on a later summer trip to Paris, and obviously the Spanish with their siestas) were onto something. LA, which is already a warm place to begin with, was kissed by a heat wave this week and I found myself completely unwilling and unable to muster up the effort to be productive in the afternoon. I think we in America need some kind of cultural summer policy where we all agree to adopt the clearly wiser practices of our European brethren and write off afternoons. No meetings, emails, or obligation to do work; we shall all nap or lounge or drink cool drinks. Agreed? Agreed.
In other news, last week I took a crew of friends to the Hollywood Bowl to see John Williams conduct some of his own film music. I usually don’t go to the types of concerts that draw what I affectionately call the “normie” crowd, so I was fully unprepared for what an event the whole shebang would be.
Did you know that if you put on a John Williams concert, audience members will show up dressed like iconic figures from the John Williams Cinematic Universe? I didn’t take photos because I think taking photos of strangers without their permission is not cool, but there were so many Indiana Joneses and Jedi there. (Adorably, I saw one family where everyone—mom, dad, all the kids down to the littlest baby—was dressed as Indiana Jones, in brown hats and leather jackets of varying sizes.) I saw, hilariously, a group of Hogwarts students wielding lightsabers. (Magic and the Force: now that’s power.)
Those who weren’t in full costume were wearing T-shirts advertising their fandom: Jurassic Park shirts, Star Wars shirts, and some super-fans wearing souvenir shirts from previous John Williams concert events. (Now that’s dedication.) My favorite, though, was this contrarian:
The Bowl, which seats close to 18,000 people, was the most packed I’ve ever seen it. (The traffic in and out was horrendous, even for LA.) Whenever the Phil started playing any kind of Star Wars music, the crowd would switch on their lightsabers and bob to the music. There is something both exhilarating and funny about watching hundreds of lightsabers earnestly headbanging, for lack of a better term, to “The Imperial March,” especially when a good number of them aren’t actually in time with the music.
I recently read Dead Famous: an Unexpected History of Celebrity by Greg Jenner, and one idea some scholars of celebrity theory (what a concept!) posit is that modern celebrity culture is derived from religious worship (particularly the veneration of saints) and fulfills a communal spiritual need. It’s not a watertight concept, and Jenner himself doesn’t fully buy it, but I think there is something to the notion at least. The John Williams concert felt like more than just a performance; the audience was made up of people with strong emotional connections to the worlds and stories that John Williams scored, and it clearly meant a lot to everyone there that we all got to see him in the flesh.
Also, the man is 91!!! And he conducted half a concert (Dudamel did the first half) with half a dozen encores! I hope, sincerely, that he got many naps before and after this weekend of concerts.
I support otters’ rights, but more importantly, I support otters’ wrongs
I sent this NYT article to so many people, for multiple reasons. Firstly, the headline: “She Steals Surfboards by the Seashore.” Incredible, perfect, no notes.
Secondly: this darling otter is stealing surfboards from humans and then riding the waves on them, all while evading capture?? That’s not a crime, that’s a real life Pixar short. What an absolute legend. Nothing but support for my president, etc. etc.
An actually perfect show
When one of my friends first recommended The Bear to me, she called it “the perfect show” and I thought momentarily that something was up because there is really no such thing as a perfect show. Turns out, Season 1 was pretty damn perfect, and I preemptively mourned the fact that there was no way Season 2 could possibly live up.
I need to find out what the creators of this show are doing in their lives to be capable of such excellence because Season 2, which I finished this week, is somehow…even better than Season 1? This show is freaking incredible, man. It might actually be perfect.
In addition to just being a great story with great writing and great acting (and great filming and editing and set dressing and basically every element that goes into this) I also found so much of the show to be so, so resonant with my own journey pursuing music at a high level.
While Episode 7, “Forks,” (spoilers in link) is rightfully a standout episode and genuinely one of the best episodes of TV I’ve ever seen, I have a very soft spot in my heart for Episode 4, “Copenhagen,” which was both soothing and so viscerally familiar to me.
This season especially of the show depicts the never-ending pursuit of excellence under pressure—always somewhat at odds with the desire to find contentment—so well that it’s more relatable to me as a classical musician than most movies/TV shows about music.
Stuff I’m Listening To
I’ve been ping-ponging between the usual classical and pop poles this week. Firstly, I suddenly have become seized with an obsession with the Busoni arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne from the Violin Partita in D minor, which I’ve always loved but has reared its head this month to be something I absolutely must learn to play.
I have spent, uh, hours just listening to Evgeny Kissin’s interpretation over and over and over again. God, it’s so, so good, and still hasn’t gotten old.
(I have spent this week doing the very tedious task of figuring out fingerings for this piece, which is simultaneously something I absolutely hate doing, am very good at, and find a weird sort of peace in doing.)
Secondly, I am still not over Thomas Adès’ Dante, but only the part that takes place in Hell, to the point that it’s maybe getting tired but I still can’t stop. I love the entire “Inferno” sequence but this week found myself repeatedly going back to “The Gluttons—in slime.”
I think what gets me is that this segment—as with every movement depicting one of the circles of Hell—starts out depicting some unbearably torturous setting, but then, almost inexplicably, just becomes so beautiful. The section starting at 1:48 feels like an almost heartbreaking escape from the heaviness of eternal punishment, and then at 2:55 there’s a sequence so ridiculously, rapturously gorgeous that it makes my hair stand on end every damn time. It’s a stretch of such intense suspended yearning that I think that a movement titled “The Gluttons—in slime” has no business being this lovely.
Of course, this is Hell, and gluttony is a sin (says who), and so at 3:27 everything comes tumbling down with no hope of catharsis. However, this is the digital streaming era, so what I do is just keep scrubbing back to that 1:48-3:27 section and listening to that bit over and over again, living forever in that too-brief stretch of hope and beauty, subjecting myself to a sort of auditory Sisyphean agony.
Now for a complete 180. I created a playlist (on Apple Music only, sorry) called “Summer Vibes” which is exactly what it sounds like!
Every song on my Summer Vibes playlist has to pass a crucial test: would this song make me feel like the effortlessly chic heroine in a lighthearted movie if I were to blast it in my convertible while driving along the Pacific Coast Highway?
Maybe an easier shorthand test—does this song make me feel like this:
“Summer Vibes” is not a playlist of ambition or drive. It is a playlist of breeziness, of the specific kind of sexiness that comes with lazy hot summer afternoons and languid conversations and sweet wine and airy sundresses and not trying too hard because effort is work and as we have learned from the Italians who forbade me from practicing between noon and 4, summer afternoons are not for work!
I realize that all of this—the Chaconne, the gluttonous circle of Hell, a playlist that makes me feel like Convertible Barbie—is a very confusing sound world to just spring on you like this, but I contain multitudes, dammit. 🎹