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April 30, 2009You say you want a revolution?Well start one!WILL IT CHANGE THE WORLD?Tall order. But it might change some minds—or open some ears. ALLOW ME TO REVOLUTIONIZE YOUR LIFE,I used to tell coworkers at one of those hideous things I used to have—what do they call them—“jobs.” Instead, someone has revolutionized mine. Someone has given me free and easy access to all the live classical music I could ever want, right in my Mission backyard. Radical! The man: Charith Premawardhana. The mission: Classical Revolution. The premise: Take classical music out of the concert hall and bring it to the masses, in relaxed settings like cafes, bars, art galleries, at no charge. The promise: Week after week of beautiful music to come, free as sound itself. CLASSICAL REVOLUTION,a motley crew of professional and nonprofessional musicians, both from and not from conservatories, provide virtuoso chamber music to those who ordinarily might not hear it live, those who are curious, or would never spend money to be exposed to it, along with casual fans and classical music addicts, like myself, who need a regular fix. I get introduced to them through the Red Poppy Art House, where they are resident artists and perform monthly, when I go to hear Schubert’s “Winterreise,” songs with piano accompaniment, but the singer is sick that night. I’m not disappointed, however; the day is saved by whatever Classical Revolution musicians happen to be available, and they arrive one by one as the pianist plays solo. They play the Brahms Piano Quartet, Opus 60. Not too shabby. The next time I go to a scheduled CR performance at the Poppy, I hear a concert of Haydn and Beethoven featuring violinist Karsten Windt of the Deutsche Symphony Orchestra, an event billed as “Music (not only) for Connoisseurs.” “Thanks for bringing Beethoven back from the dead,” I tell him later. At that event I meet Charith Premawardhana, the brain behind the brainchild that is Classical Revolution. What started as an idea in his head is now a movement active in San Francisco, Reno, Portland, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Berlin, Toronto, Cincinnati and Ann Arbor. Charith describes himself as a “viola player, organizer and rabble rouser,” and quotes Eugene Debs, “The most heroic word in any language is Revolution.” HARDLY HEROICAs a classical music lover, I have often been annoyed by generic descriptions like stuffy, stodgy, high-brow, boring and especially “soothing.” Hello? Have you heard Rite of Spring? There was a riot at the premiere because it wasn’t soothing enough. Or that time someone walked into my home, where I had Bach organ toccatas playing, and asked, “Where’s the funeral?” Gary Kamiya, on Salon.com, said of pop music, that it’s “such a huge mansion that it contains some rooms everyone is going to like.” Classical music may be the biggest mansion of all, the Palace of Versailles, perhaps. Any effort to assess or dismiss classical music wholesale is out of ignorance, but it’s not surprising uneducated ears are overwhelmed by the scope and intimidating range of classical genres and repertoire. LEONARD BERNSTEIN,in a Young People’s Concert of 1959, asks “What is Classical Music?” He rejects the usual terminology “good music,” “serious music,” “high-brow” “art music,” “symphony music, “long-hair,” and even “classical,” because of the distinction between the Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras. Instead he suggests that “exact” music might be the best description because all classical music of whatever era is written exactly as the composer intends it to be played, with notations as to how to render his or her intent. Of course the interpretation varies from conductor to conductor and performer to performer, but anyone that plays it will play the same notes, the same rhythms, the same instruments that the composer’s score demands. People attending a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth expect to hear it as they have heard it before, everything the same, in sequence, as interpreted by the conductor to make manifest Beethoven’s intentions. “Perfection of form and shape,” is the ultimate goal, according to Bernstein. “Exact” music can’t be changed. It is forever played as it is written. If you do change it, rescore it, for instance, for different instruments, it’s a whole new piece of exact music called a “transcription.” Popular songs, as Bernstein points out, we are used to hearing in countless arrangements that veer off every which way from the written sheet music. And it’s the nature of jazz to change, or improvise. Then there are adaptations like the Modern Jazz Quartet’s “Blues on Bach.” Or 20th-century composer Prokofiev’s “Classical Symphony,” written in the Classical style. Too much information? THAT’S WHERE THE MAN,Charith Premawardhana, steps in. As John D. Goldman, President of the San Francisco Symphony, writes, “Music is a constant reminder that the world outside the concert hall, for all its imperfections and anxieties, is also a world of beauty.” Charith and the musicians of Classical Revolution provide that reminder literally “outside the concert hall.” Check out Revolution Café on a Sunday night and grab a beer, or SoCha Café on a Wednesday, and relax with a latte. Hear some classical music played live by passionate young musicians. Like it or don’t like it. You’ve got nothing to lose. Maybe it’s just enough to “cleanse your palate” for your own preferences. If you like it, come back; if you really like it, pursue it. As a writer, I avoid throw-away phrases like “words can’t express…” but that’s exactly why my passion for music is so poignant to me. There are indeed things words can’t express, things fully articulated by music. It’s a language I can understand, but can’t speak. Someone said, “Mathematics is music for the mind; music is mathematics for the soul.” All I know about the mathematics of music is that as a free-lance writer living in break-your-bank San Francisco, my favorite SF Symphony seat, B103, is $75; the Opera, $100-$235, and Classical Revolution costs you a cup of coffee. I estimate I spent close to $2K on symphony and opera tickets this season. I wouldn’t give up the formal concert hall, however. I like the grandeur of it, the consistency of it, the respect of people who dress in recognition that the orchestra is wearing tails and gowns to perform for them, the explicit motivation that we are there to hear the music at a time certain. But the “rules,” are another divisive complaint about classical music. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO ACT?In a concert hall, you have to know “how to act,” which can be a turn-off for some folks. There’s the “when do I applaud?” issue. The Oxford Companion to Music suggests that the “custom of showing one’s pleasure at beautiful music by immediately following it with an ugly noise” springs partly from “the unconscious desire of an excited audience to express its excitement rather than keep it pent.” I wouldn’t call it unconscious; we do want to express excitement. In a concert hall, we contain ourselves; the aura at a CR Revolution Café performance is one of freedom and celebration, departing from concert hall propriety by free expressions of appreciation or delight. We won’t be silent just because we’re supposed to be! Hey, we’re breaking rules here! HOLD THE MAYO, HOLD THE LETTUCE, HOLD THE APPLAUSEBut is holding applause necessarily just a snooty, outdated practice, a tradition it’s time to abandon? Myself, I find between-movement applause distracting and disruptive of the spell music can cast, though once in a while a star pianist playing a warhorse concerto might get a special helping of applause after the first movement. But I believe a work in parts is meant to be delivered and heard as a whole, and hold with a comment by Leonard Bernstein’s first lecture in the Harvard “The Unanswered Question” series. He screened a Boston Symphony performance of himself conducting Mozart’s 41st Symphony, the first movement of which was interrupted by a bomb scare, and an hour’s disruption in the proceedings. He spent the hour in despair over such an incongruous development. He wouldn’t have minded had the scare come during his lecture “…but to interrupt Mozart! To interrupt that extraordinary wholeness and continuity, that entity which is this work, was the greatest insult of all.” I find it more respectful to the piece itself, and the performers’ concentration, to let the music work its magic and show my appreciation after the entire performance of the entire piece. That’s why I no longer listen to KDFC, with their abominable habit of playing single movements. IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS,my first visit to Revolution Café at 22nd and Valencia, I can see that concert hall discretion, indeed, discreet silent anything, even footsie under a table, is not going to be possible. This is a rowdy bar atmosphere and people are here to enjoy, not “hold” their feelings for a later time (what’s that about anyway?). Thought I was getting here early (depends upon for what I guess) at 6:00 for the 8:00 show, to enjoy some coffee and columnizing, but there’s already a jazz quintet playing, I’m squeezed onto the end of the bar, and it’s just another Sunday night in the Mission. The saxophonist has a scabbed knee. It’s hard to miss anything here. As the bar gets busy, I move by awkward degrees to a vacant chair at an uncomfortable angle, and finally to a vacating table I swoop down on like a hawk. Another seeker on a barstool commandeers the table next to mine. “Ya gotta swoop,” we agree. I’ll know better next time. I’ll come at noon! The jazz band is revving up, patrons are dancing, the hat gets passed around. The quintet is replaced by a sidewalk tenor, apparently just a walk-up in a flannel shirt and bill cap, who soon after walks away. It’s after 7:00 and if I were just walking up, I’d be tempted to walk away as well. The place is hopping, noisy, SRO at the bar. The atmosphere, to me, a long-time seasoned fan, seems appalling for classical music. I can just imagine the late Tony Randall walking in here and making a citizen’s arrest. Music abuse! Music abuse! But until the performance begins, I will “hold” my misgivings. IT’S GETTING DARKER,outside and in. The crowd is somewhat settling down. The dynamic is shifting. Some are clearing out, some are squeezing in. At 7:50 the players start filing in. They are all in their 20’s with baby’s bum complexions. The cellist’s cello case reads “Got cello?” I got cello fever, that much I know. I’m almost afraid to find out what happens when the music begins. I smell pot, patchouli, human sweat. Christ, I feel like I’m on a first date. Will it go well? Will I arrive excited and leave disappointed? The man, Charith P., appears. Things will soon tighten up. The crowd settles down and the music starts up. One lady keeps looking back in annoyance at someone who has the nerve to keep talking, the look we’ve all seen at concerts or films, so it’s not so much different so far. “There’s always someone who never shuts up,” says a fellow named Art, beside me. Tonight’s quartet is Grieg, performed by “pre-professional students at SFCM” and this is the debut performance marking the new collaboration between CR and the Conservatory of Music, deemed an “explosion.” The performers are top-flight and the performance kick-ass. This (writing while listening at Davies) would be considered (by me) to be the height of rudeness, and I would dress myself down big time, like that guy who was drawing architectural plans in the front row, but there is a wall of SRO folks in front of our tables and I am not in view of the musicians. But even if I were, hey, this is a coffee shop. If you’re free to groove to the music, you’re also free to write in your journal. For once, I am not having to “write in my head” while listening, storing my thoughts up to let out on the page later that night. I AM HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPYto the third power. At a comfortably private wall bench, in my element, writing, beautiful music caressing my ear, with the delight and energy of an entirely fresh and unjaded classical music audience around me. During a break, featuring some casual playing I hardly notice, the conversation level rises and I can hear only the high notes amid the unintelligible cackle of English spoken by the crowd. A drunk Spaniard named Irving (very popular name in Spain) tries to ingratiate himself into our sphere. He can’t understand people who come to a bar and write on a laptop. I explain that I’m writing about the music, a revelation of no import to him; booze and womanizing are all he’s after. I piss him off because he spills beer wherever he goes and I keep sternly warning him to not fall against my table. He makes the rounds putting his arm around any woman handy and breathing alcohol in her face. I TOO AM INTOXICATED,not on my Humboldt Hemp ale, but by the aggressive originality, ambition and realization of this project. I’ve got a standing date, Wednesdays and Sundays, with Classical Revolution, if I want it; never again do I have to wait till certain too-few-and-far-between dates on my calendar to get my fix, I can now hear live classical twice a week no matter what. There comes a disruption I hadn’t expected—someone knocks my latte over my (closed) laptop and lap, and I let go with an irrepressible Easter Sunday “Jesus Christ!” Napkins come from every direction. The stumbling passerby apologizes profusely, but it’s OK, no damage done.
When they start up again Charith is on viola playing something I recognize but it sounds different. I can’t put my finger on what piece it is or why it’s different. A familiar passage comes up that I can clearly hear in my head, and I say to Peter, beside me, “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that that is the Brahms Horn Trio without the horn.” “Charith!” I call, afterwards, “Charith!” With my face screwed up I ask him, “Am I out of my mind, or was that the Brahms Horn Trio?” He confirms it indeed was. “Bingo!” I yell, “Nailed it!” “HEY YOU.”After the show I poke Charith in the arm as he breaks down the equipment. He’d made a Facebook comment suggesting he’d be playing a Mozart quintet that night. He turns to face me. “No man has ever offered me a Mozart quintet before and someday, mister, you are going to deliver.” And I fan my fingers out in an expansive gesture, “In the fullness of time,” I assure him, “the fullness of time.” The other musician promises me Wednesday at SoCha. “What quintets do we have?” Charith asks. Doesn’t matter to me, I haven’t heard any of them. Whatever they play, whomever they play, I’ll listen and like it, thank you very much. I walk down 22nd St. on cloud nine. This has been one of the most unexpectedly delightful nights of my life! Cool bartender, great new friends, great beer and, most important, great music. The prospect of a running stream of live classical music has me ga-ga. I find myself striding down the street hyperventilating and mouthing, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” It turns out Classical Revolution has a jazzy offshoot ensemble named “Yes Yes.” AT HOME I WHIP MYSELFinto a frenzy tearing the closet apart to extract the boxes of records I have nowhere else to put and never unpacked. I am going to find the Brahms Horn Trio if it’s the last record in the last box. I have to hear the thing like I have to breathe. Within an hour every record I own, and there are many, litters the floor, but I strike gold with my beloved Rudolf Serkin Columbia Masterworks recording with Michael Tree, violin, and Myron Bloom, horn. And on the other side, a piece I listened to for three solid months, the Schumann Piano Quintet, a run interrupted by a trip to Paris, where, on the Eiffel Tower taking in the City of Lights, I pined to hear it again. And here’s my precious Serkin/Budapest Quartet with the Brahms Piano Quintet. Throw in the Brahms Clarinet Quintet and I might be happy for years on that desert island we all hypothesize finding ourselves on. I don’t know why they don’t put release dates on albums, but I can date this one just by the price. Sam Goody in Philly used to slice a corner of the cellophane off and write it on the cover. I paid, once upon a time, $3.89 for that record. It’s got to be 30 years old. Certainly Serkin was still Director of the Curtis Institute when I was a teenager in Philadelphia, one of the greatest classical music cities in the world, where I grew up with the Philly Boys under Eugene Ormandy and, later, Ricardo Muti. Lucky me. I SPEND THE REST OF THE NIGHTinto the morning, until 7:00 a.m., on the floor in front of my stereo, listening. At the next Classical Revolution venue I go to, Wednesday night at SoCha Café, Mission and Valencia, the vibe is waaaaay different—candle-lit and mellow—and I have time to spare before CR shows up, so I hand-write letters to friends. The atmosphere is hushed and there’s a decent chance you won’t be disturbed by Spanish drunkards sitting next to the musicians, gyrating and making stupid faces. Charith is not playing tonight but flits about like a moth, checking out the performance from various angles. I notice him texting something, which turns out to be a Facebook status update that he’s at SoCha listening to the Mendelssohn Op. 13. The next night I check out the jazz stylings of Yes Yes ensemble at the ArtHouse, for a musical-literary event featuring short story readings by Adam Johnson and Scott Hutchings. Adam’s story, “Trial of the Century,” comments on the 10th anniversary of the O.J. Simpson trial, written from the point of view of their dog Kato. “In love, people are more serious and incapable” than you can imagine, he observes. Scott’s story, “Thirty Thousand Dollars,” is about going for the $30,000 reward for killing the shark that killed a nun. He baits the sharks with chum and cheap rosary beads. Though I’m also a lover of jazz, I give myself permission to skip Yes Yes concerts. The new-found classical dates will take enough of my time. IN FACT, CHARITH IS RUNNING ME RAGGED.This may be too much of a good thing. I don’t like to go out every night—I need an occasional QEH, Quiet Evening at Home, and if I don’t feel like going I’ll wonder what I’m missing. Then there are bound to be conflicts; more event triage to perform here in the city of something’s-always-happening. Other events included a “Cello Madness Congress,” a “hip-hop symphony,” and a performance of a composition student’s work at the Crowden School. I skip them all, however, wanting to pace myself. But CR’s mission to make classical music as much a nightlife option as other types of music is an unqualified success. At intermission at the ArtHouse, I am pleased to say I pay someone $5 to write a poem. That someone, young poet Silvi Alcivar, is stationed at “The Poetry Store,” a little table with a red Royal typewriter on it. We’re to write a theme, or words, she might use in the poem. I choose from the drawer a recycled paper with cherry tree branches on it. The name of the event tonight is Words and Music: Tales of Betrayal and Revenge, so I write down, “betrayal” and “revenge,” and am instructed, “Tell me who it’s for.” For? I think. I wasn’t relating the words to myself, just as concepts. But then I recall, a former friend has cut me out of her life without a word of explanation. Ah, yes, make it for [the rat-faced ice bitch -Ed.]. REVENGE AND BETRAYAL(for Name Withheld) those are such heavy / words, aren’t they? / like whipping cream in / coffee, I want that at first / but always the regret / comes before I can see / the coffee grains / emerging from the mixture / of water and milk and beans. I like it well enough, for a three-minute poem, though “mixture of water, milk and beans” turns me off as a description of coffee. She has a “sort of” permanent residency at Café du Nord, should you wish to commission your own poem. The next night, I attend former Red Poppy Arthouse director Meklit Hadera’s performance in the play “Over the Mountain,” at Brava Theater on 24th St.. She wrote the music and performs as “the woman” in a couple of scenes, in one of them assembling Molotov cocktails. Walking home down 24th, I can hardly believe my eyes when there, again, at Bluesix Gallery, is the Picasso Quartet from SoCha, once again playing my beloved Mendelssohn Quartet No. 2, a piece which asks the musical question, “Ist es war?” Is it true you’re waiting for me in the leafy glade? NOW THAT I KNOW ABOUT CR,they seem to be everywhere. This is a small, intent gathering paying strict attention to the music. I arrive in the middle of the first movement (damn!) and find it grotesquely inappropriate when someone blurts out after the second movement, “And what was that lovely piece?” and the first violinist explains, “That was the second movement of the Mendelssohn Quartet No. 2.” The isolated applause sounds like a blatant faux pas, with most attendees staying silent. Between movements, she and her companion debate about clapping between movements. I leave when the piece is finished, not realizing there had been a cover to enter the concert. I’ll catch them next time I stumble across them, as I am sure to. MY SECOND GO-ROUNDat Revolution Café, I score a seat in front of the SRO wall, closer this time to the musicians. The opening act is a trumpet quartet. How often do you hear those? Horns remind me of Christmas, a refreshing image on this hot spring night. But there is real competition from the outside seating. People want to be outside drinking a cold beer, music be damned. I am against my will smoking someone else’s cigarette. For these talking and laughing patrons, the music is negligible background noise. Well, it goes with the territory. This isn’t Carnegie Hall Café. A homeless woman comes in with her head bowed so low you can’t see her face. How awful a contrast this lively scene must pose to her own life. She is followed by a new fresh-faced woman asking, “Do you guys need a violin?” The musicians are only too happy to welcome one into the fold. The personnel changes often. And finally, I get my previously advertised Mozart Quintet, in C Major. One striking young cellist looks like an Asian Lawrence Harvey. Another guy looks like the Jock of All Time, wearing long shorts, running shoes, a tie-dyed T-shirt and a backwards bill cap. Charith is sitting in front of me, playing with his whole body, swaying from side to side, rising from his seat, leveraging his legs however his center of gravity requires. My heart bleeds with envy at his rapid fingerwork and mastery of the music in front of him. GOD WANTS ME TO BE A WRITER,but my first passion is classical music. I’ve been listening for forty years. For my fifteenth birthday, I asked my mother for the Deutsche Grammaphon Beethoven Bicentennial collection. I tore through that stuff. Beethoven was my first love, but Bach, the love of my life. And as a career manic-depressive, music has more than once saved my troubled soul. No, I don’t “know” music; I know only what it does to me. And had God given me a choice: you can be a writer or a virtuoso musician, I would have chosen the latter. Words convey emotion; music is emotion. But ten years back when I was on the Board of Directors of the Junior Bach Festival, I tried to take violin lessons from president John Mark. By the time he had me merely holding the violin properly, I said, as I did when I first put hard contact lenses in my eyes, “You have got to be kidding me!” That’s why I am so deeply grateful for those folks who put their heart and soul and life into producing the stuff for us, like the musicians of Classical Revolution. Clearly this is a labor of love. But it also provides performers with more opportunities to play, and to get exposure and audience response. Win/win. OUT ON THE STREET LATERI encounter the homeless woman. She tells me she was hit by a cab last year, and I’m thinking, I don’t need a story, dear, no story could be sadder than what I see in front of me. I lay a five-spot on her, and count my blessings. On the way home I pass Chicken John on stage at Amnesia, playing the guitar. I stand at the door and watch for a while, but I can’t follow Mozart with that and head home, where I start a revolution of my own—thirty-three of them per minute. I install the Schumann Piano Quintet on my turntable. I could listen to it for three months, I bet.
------------------------------------------------------------ “Ode to JSB"
Vive la révolution classique! copyright Alexandra Jones 2009 |
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