sometimes sloppy is offensive.

or alternately, hipsters try to ruin one of my favorite pieces of music and then redeem themselves by playing some of their own music. For the good kind of sloppy, please refer to this post.

Acting like a snarky, know-it-all gets one nowhere in life; it stirs up resentment and difference rather than an empathetic exchange. When something is bad, I prefer to ignore it because there is enough good out there that deserves attention. The bad is often just a misunderstanding or on its way to getting better. However, if I’ve been duped into paying to see someone, whether deliberately or accidentally, wreck a masterpiece of modern music, I might feel obliged to comment. Especially if I’ve been talking up the piece to one of my friends and we go out of our way on a Saturday when we could be eating grilled sausages in a park somewhere.

Kranky is a fantastic label and we all love Kranky here. [Insert disclaimer for the rest of NAP here, my views do not necessarily reflect everyone else’s views etc.] The intentions of the organizers were honest, and I applaud them: they wanted a bit of crossover between the composers on their label and the contemporary classical world. Gotcha, all there, down with that. Then threw out an adventurous/audacious idea: how about having the Caleb Burhans String Quartet perform Steve Reich’s Different Trains? I might pause for a minute or two as a promoter or event-organizer here because of the singular thematic significance of this work.*

Different Trains was written for the Kronos Quartet. Pause again, inhale deeply, think clearly. If a quartet is not up to the Kronos standard,** they had better figure out how the fuck to perform a different/better interpretation of whatever piece of music it is. Period. No exceptions, not in New York. Furthermore, even if one advertises “Loscil, Brian McBride, and The Caleb Burhans String Quartet” in big letters and puts “Steve Reich’s Different Trains” in small letters on a flyer, one should figure that most people know who Steve Reich is, will most certainly be familiar with the recording of this work, and a lot of us will have seen it performed live by Kronos.

There is a precision, a rawness, and an immense physicality that reinforces the emotional impact when Kronos performs the piece. Sorry if this seems overly pedantic to you dear readers who are already familiar with Different Trains, but an elucidation of the central themes seems necessary to explain why I am so pissed off about sloppiness. There are three parts: America – Before the War, Europe – During the War, and After the War; and they each have to performed differently to get the meaning across. We are not in a car driving from Seattle to Portland in some sort of melancholy mood. If you reduce the piece to some sort of mannerist interpretation about noise, I’m afraid you don’t fundamentally understand the work and don’t deserve anyone’s attention.

If the audience sees four bows moving with unity and precision, they are reminded of the various rods, bars, and levers of an engine train’s wheels moving together to produce locomotion. If a quartet isn’t moving in unison, this impression is lost; the melding between musicians and machine doesn’t occur. The subsequent phase-shifting requires the initial unison so that we can hear one rhythm or melody accelerating or playing off of one another. If the audience has no sense of continuity because random musicians are playing random bits (and the pace is slightly off from lack of rehearsal) it becomes mush. And for fuck’s sake, turn down the amplification of the recorded bits so that the audience can hear the live musicians. The piece produces tension with the rising pitch of the blowing whistles, phasing of rhythms, the sense of acceleration into an unknown, and also between the the tension of live performer and the recording. The machines aren’t meant to drown out of the living, breathing human- at least not in the first part. America – Before the War is also a remembering of Reich’s own journeys as a child across the American landscape, between parents in New York and L.A. The innocence and hopeful anxiety is crucial. It’s not noisy and overwhelming at this point; it must be played precisely in order to recognize and emphasize the coming shift.

When the whistle of a steam engine is replaced with a siren of war at the beginning of Europe – During the War, a fundamental change of meaning and mood has occurred. If the audience doesn’t feel the shift, I think you’ve blown it as performers. It’s one thing if the performers aren’t technically able to play all of the parts and don’t have them memorized; it becomes another, more offensive thing, if the performers don’t even seem to acknowelge the composer’s intentions. Those trains were going to auschwitz- not to a summer camp. How can you be so blasé?! A measured deceleration, change in rate of the crescendos and diminuendos, an added shrillness to the timbres, an increased sense of desperation, maybe even a little sweat would have gone a long way. This is neither the time not place to maintain one’s composure as a musician. Oh gaaawwd, do I even mention the video? More wtf?????! Perhaps, the Caleb Burhans String Quartet got the melancholy of the After the War part. I can’t recall because I was angry and I’m a bitch and I’m sorry about that if it hurts anyone’s feelings. My feelings were hurt by the trivialization of a piece of music that valiently tries to sort out a bit a human history.

The rest of the Kranky stuff, the other performances by the same string players, and the other videos were brilliant. I will go see more of the Wordless Music Series when it starts up again in the fall. Sorry, if I’m abruptly leaving out the good bits of the evening. I wasn’t really able to calm down until after having a vodka-tonic at Iona while listening to a hipster DJ. Here’s a nice video to help take one’s mind off the memory of bad performances:

*Dear whoever you are who decided to do this- please realize that I have made bigger mistakes in my own life- and, in a way, I admire you for your overly ambitious undertaking.

**Kronos isn't necessarily perfection embodied; they perform some compositions better than others. Tim Berne wrote Dry Ink for them and, in my opinion, Bloodcount would have performed it better.