March 22, 2024

UPDATED: This American Life (again) and what the LA Phil gets right

UPDATE: I have just been told that right before airtime, my segment was cut for time, so the first half of today's post is now fake news out of date.

I was in a hurry last week and am not 100% sure the newsletter was actually emailed, so if you didn't get it in your inbox, you can read it here!

Up until Friday morning, the most exciting thing that had happened to me this week was that a literary agent emailed me out of the blue to let me know that they'd come across my writing about music and wanted to know if I had ever thought about writing a book.

(The honest answer is yes, I've had a feminist fairy tale retelling about a court composer kicking around in my head for a decade—no one steal my idea—but I don't think that's what they were talking about.)

I scheduled a meeting with said literary agent for next week and settled in for a couple of days of being able to finally—finally!—focus on learning and practicing music without any distractions.

Then This American Life called. Again.

A fact-checker wanted to know how to pronounce my name and make sure they had the story straight. Why? Because the producers had decided to use a tiny fragment of the episode I'd originally recorded in the show going out TODAY.

(There is also, apparently, a longer version of the story, closer to what I'd originally recorded, airing on Boston public radio in April.)

I had just made myself lunch (an absolutely heavenly homemade chicken-parmesan-mushroom soup with wild rice, chickpeas, and rapini) and was sipping spoonfuls while confirming facts (Him: "Can I confirm that you are a professional concert pianist?" Me: "Yes." My impostor syndrome: "NOPE!!!"), feeling totally calm, and then the fact-checker said "Okay, so Ira is going to say—" and suddenly my stomach started whirling around like the teacup ride at Disneyland.

Ira Glass is going to say my name. Ira Glass is going to talk about me in...some form I do not know yet because I actually have no idea what fragment of my story they're going to use.

That's right, I am going to be mentioned by the cousin of Philip Glass.

The emotional roller coaster that This American Life has strapped me into for the past 3.5 months should be studied in engineering school. First I had to drop everything to record for what I belatedly found out was an audience of millions. Then, right when I'd moved on to the next thing, I had to do it all again. Then I was told that all that work I did—twice rising to the occasion and working through the panic of doing something for a massive listenership—was all for nothing and that I had worked hard to be heard by zero people. Then they waited for me to get over the disappointment and went hahahaha PSYCH! it's going up TODAY!

Ira Glass, quit playing games with my heart.

Anyway, if I do end up being in today's episode (given the JOURNEY they have sent me on, I'm not going to accept that it's happening until it's actually up), there are a number of ways you can listen to This American Life here.

(RIP my stomach.)

UPDATE: as stated at the top of this post, my segment was pulled for time with apologies from the folks at TAL. All I have to say is, congrats to Ira Glass for being the first man in my whole life to lead me on—it had to happen sometime. 🥲

Inject this electric bass concerto into my veins

Usually when the LA Phil announces their upcoming seasons I am hyped for all of it and I stand by it. You can't ask me to choose a concert I'm more excited about than the others because I love all my children equally.

Like Lucille Bluth, though, I have to confess to a little bit of fibbing. Ever since it was announced, I was secretly the most excited about the program the Phil played this weekend.

The program: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Ballade in A minor, Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story Symphonic Dances, and Victor Wooten's La Lección Tres, a new concerto for electric bass and orchestra.

I was so hyped for this, in fact, that when I got the news that family I hadn't seen in over a decade was finally visiting the US, and would be coming to stay in LA the same weekend as this concert, I refused to cancel going to this concert and simply bought more tickets for my family, arranging the entire weekend—for which it was someone else's birthday—around it. I am the best, but I am also the worst.

Everyone ended up having a fantastic time, because my taste in music is impeccable and the LA Phil always delivers. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Ballade? Divine. The West Side Story Symphonic Dances? I don't care what you think of the musical, it's one of the funnest experiences you will have in the concert hall, particularly if you do as I did and get seats overlooking the percussion section.

It's such a crowd-pleaser—the audience loved it when the orchestra finger-snaps in the prologue and shouted "MAM-BO!" in the Mambo—and I swear there's a special kind of dopamine my brain produces when the entire percussion section in an orchestra just goes to town. I especially loved it when one of the LA Phil percussionists got on the drum set and just started grooving during the Cool Fugue.

But the real reason I was hyped beyond belief for this concert was for the new piece, La Lección Tres, a concerto for electric bass and orchestra by Victor Wooten, with the composer soloing. You can see a tiny bit of the piece here, though it doesn't do the whole work justice:

The piece was SO COOL. Wooten did some really mindblowing things on the two electric basses he had—one of them he played with a bow—and there was an honest-to-god musical comedy sketch written into the piece, featuring the conductor (Thomas Wilkins) losing control of the orchestra, the double bass section taking over, and Wooten throwing down in a bass-vs-bass face-off. The virtuosity and musical back-and-forth wasn't just a gimmick though; the entire piece was scaffolded with driving rhythms and chewy little motifs and was such a joy to follow til the end.

This is what I love so much about new music and forward-thinking orchestras, like the LA Phil, that embrace it. You never know what you're going to get in a program that's got more than the same-old-same-old, but it's such a special, unknowable delight to experience something new and to feel the concert hall come alive with the utter freshness of something that hasn't been flayed to death.

It's something that's on my mind with the shocking news that Esa-Pekka Salonen is exiting the San Francisco Symphony, citing the irreconcilability of working with a board that is, from all reports, looking backwards, not forwards.

I mentioned on Bluesky my utter dismay at reading that the board of the SFS is planning on cutting costs wherever possible, including limiting commissions to just five a year (FIVE! a major American orchestra!) and making—I'm paraphrasing here—cheaper programming decisions.

I just wrote a whole article about how it's far more costly (in time and money!) to program lesser-known marginalized composers, you guys. Decisions like this—while saving money in the very short term—can have enormous long-term effects on music and culture, even more so if other symphonies, looking to the SFS, follow suit.

Orchestras of America, if you're listening, don't be like the SF Symphony. Be like the LA Phil, which is clearly far superior, kthxbai.

(Also, it turned out that for one of the family members I dragged brought to the concert hall, it was their first time attending a live symphony concert, and they absolutely loved it. Further proof that I have impeccable taste and know what I'm doing! Also that the popular belief that you need to introduce new audiences to classical concertgoing via "tried-and-true" well-known works is total bunk.)

Now, if you need me, I'll be curled up with a cup of tea, trying not to think about Ira Glass. 🎹