Songwriters: Jimmy Webb

The Sixties were a different time in the music industry. Radio play was still the only way artists became widely known. Top 40 stations still played music from a variety of genres. You could hear pop, commercial rock, Rhythm and Blues, and Middle of the Road artists one after another on the same station although some genres, like Country and Western, weren’t there yet.

I remember two songs in particular, both from one-hit-wonder bands, three years apart. I don’t suppose I shared this with anyone at the time as they are both rather sappy pop songs. One was a silly folky tune called Red Rubber Ball by The Cyrcle. The other was an overblown ballad called The Worst That Could Happen and it was recorded by Brooklyn Bridge. It's worth watching even a bit of the later song just for the outfits.

While doing some song writing study last week I discovered that The Worst That Could Happen was written by Jimmy Webb and was, in fact, a cover of a Fifth Dimension song. Incidentally, Red Rubber Ball was written by none other than Paul Simon with Bruce Woodly of The Seekers. The Seekers recorded Georgy Girl, the theme song from the British movie which made Lynn Redgrave a star.

I already knew and liked songs by Webb and Simon and, it seems, I was able to identify songs that I didn't know were theirs, recorded by relatively obscure artists.

In 2012, Webb was named President of the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, recognition, by his peers, of a long and notable career. He replaced Hal David, Burt Bacharach’s lyricist. (If you don’t know who they are let me know; I’ll get to them in another post.)

Webb grew up in the rural South, son of a church pastor. By the time he was twelve he was playing piano in his father’s church where his mother played accordion and his father guitar. The only music allowed on their radio at home were Country and Western and White Gospel. When he was fifteen he bought his first record, Turn Around, Look at Me by his favourite singer, Glen Campbell.

His parents recognized his extraordinary talent and, when it was time for him to study music at college, his entire family relocated to Los Angeles. When his mother died, his father moved back to Arkansas but Jimmy Webb stayed in LA, eventually signing a song-writing contract with Johnny Rivers. Rivers, himself, recorded By the Time I Get to Phoenix in 1966.

Rivers was producing a vocal group, The 5th Dimension, for his own label. Five of Webb’s songs were included in their debut album Up, Up and Away including the title track. Guitarist Rivers and pianist Webb both played on the recording. Up, Up and Away is the exemplar of the sub-genre Sunshine Pop and won Grammys for Best Song and Recording of the Year in 1968.

Glen Campbell recorded By the Time I Get to Phoenix in 1967. It was an enormous Country Music hit and crossed over to the pop charts. It is among the most often recorded songs of the late 20th century. Even Frank Sinatra had a go at it.

When you see Campbell in some of the television clips, it’s easy to be dismissive of the fancy cowboy get-up and overblown musical arrangements. But he was a legitimate musician and originally made his living as a session guitarist. He played on dozens of recordings in the late 50s and early 60s. He was on all the Jan and Dean surf songs. He toured with the Beach Boys (playing bass and singing the high harmonies). He’s even on Sinatra’s Strangers in the Night.
He also had his own TV show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, as a result of his success on the Smothers Brothers show.

Jimmy Webb went on to have a long professional relationship with Glen Campbell who, you will remember, was already Webb’s favourite singer when Webb was at teen. Webb himself has since recorded more than a half dozen albums, some of which feature as guests many famous County Music artists.

As his early success with The 5th Dimension illustrates he was able to write successfully in other genres as well.

The wonderfully quirky MacArthur Park is perhaps the best example of this. It is an over-the-top crazy song with multiple sections and a psychedelic lyric in the chorus. It’s bombastic. The most famous recording featured actor Richard Harris, who wasn't a singer, reminding one of Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. It was also recorded by Disco Queen Donna Summer.

In this Nashville Network talk show recording, Campbell sings it better than Harris and you get to hear him play guitar and not in his familiar Country and Western Style. I heard Campbell refer to it as "the greatest song ever written" on another clip, but it isn't even in the running IMHO and hasn't stood the test of time. The song may sound like a joke now, but it is well to remember that the past is a foreign land, and a strange place if you didn't live there. This applies to music and songwriter as well as anything else.

Mohawk Community Choir at St. Paul's

I went to hear the Mohawk Community Choir Sat. March 28 at St. Paul's United Church in Dundas. There were at least two local other choral concerts scheduled for the same time; A Howard Dyck-led Messiah in downtown Hamilton and Rachel Rensink-Hoff's McMaster Women's Choir on Locke St.

It is a source of frustration that we can go for weeks without any classical music events of any kind and then face the metaphysical challenge of being in two places at once. I missed last weekend's McMaster Choir concert to attend a Hamilton Philharmonic concert.

David Holler's Mohawk Community Choir (previously the Mohawk Singers, soon to be Chorus Hamilton) is a professionally-led amateur choir of about seventy-five voices.

David Holler

The important difference between this choir's concerts and that of others of a similar ilk in this region is the programming. There are no opera choruses here. Nor is there music of modern popular composers like Bob Chilcott. Mr. Holler concentrates on serious choral repertoire and programs a major piece in each concert, frequently singing in languages other than English.

The major works in last night's offering were the Ariel Ramírez's Misa Criolla and Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. He hired a percussionist (essential to the Ramírez and Bernstein) and used him in the opening number of last night's concert, Randall Thompson's The Last Words of David. This piece includes sforzando-piano singing, amongst other effects, and, with percussion accents, is an impressive curtain raiser.

They followed with Canadian Donald Patriquin's setting of the folk song Ah! Si Mon Moine. It was well performed but I prefer Harry Somer's setting.

The first half ended with the Misa Criolla. Ramírez wrote it in the early sixties, shortly after Vatican II allowed vernacular languages to be used in the Mass. He was an Argentine and includes Argentine folk song rhythms. The piece was very popular in its early years but seems dated now. Two University of Toronto undergrads, Conor Murphy and Daniel Robinson, did a fine job of the solo parts. I suspect they're both headed for a Masters and the U of T Opera School.

After a long break the choir sang Eric Whitacre's Five Hebrew Love Songs. This is not the Whitacre of Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine or Sleep. The Love Songs are earlier and more conventional for lack of a better word. They were accompanied by piano and violin and were lovely, challenging and well performed.

Eric Whitacre

They finished with the incomparable Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, also sung in Hebrew.The original version was composed for a large orchestra including two harps, solo quartet and treble singer. I watched an interview with Bernstein once in which he said that, when orchestrating, he wrote the harp parts first, then filled in the other instruments. He made a reduced version later for one harp, organ and percussion. For whatever reason, that's not what we heard last night. The percussion remained, but the harp and organ were replaced by one piano, played with extraordinary facility by Erika Reiman. There was no solo quartet and the treble solo was, against Bernsteins's express wishes, sung (very quietly) by soprano Clare MacPherson.

Leonard Bernstein

For all that, it was a very impressive performance of a piece which would challenge any choir and isn't heard very often.

The shortcomings of this group are common to most choirs of this kind and were already evident in the opening number. There are too many women for the men to balance. The soprano sound is thin and a little pinched at the top. They have difficulty with sustained singing.

Having said that, Holler is aware of these shortcomings and is working to eliminate them, which I can say with confidence having heard this group on several occasions over the past few years. The Mohawk Singers are getting better and are likely the best amateur adult choir in Greater Hamilton. They certainly sing the most challenging and interesting repertoire of any choral organization in town.

Sci-fi Spectacular at the HPO

We went Sat. March 21 to hear the Hamilton Philharmonic play a concert of mostly film music from Sci-fi movies. The orchestra was under the baton of David Martin (who also played trombone) with featured trumpet soloist Larry Larson (who conducted while Martin played).

David Martin

Larry Larson

Both are accomplished soloists and this program is a partnership. Larson is, among other things, the principal trumpet of the KW Symphony. Martin played one season as first trombone of the Montréal Symphony and has a multi-faceted career which includes teaching at the Université de Montréal.

The Hollywood orchestras that record film scores are full of first-rate players who are able to produce super-accurate performances with minimal rehearsal. The original Star Wars music was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. The HPO rendered carbon copy versions of the scores and played beautifully throughout. It's especially enjoyable to hear a live performance of music which wasn't originally intended to be heard that way.

Two pieces of standard concert music were played. They began with a performance of the opening of Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001: A Space Odyssey) which didn't miss the enormous orchestra and pipe organ the composer intended. They also played Mars from Holst's suite The Planets which is the source of much of the martial music film composers write.

There were two pieces not drawn from films. One was Martin's trombone rendition of When You Wish Upon a Star. He reminded us that John Williams has the orchestra plays the song in long notes at the end of E.T: The Extraterrestrial.

The second was Larry Larson's performance of an arrangement of Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust lifted from Cliff Brown's 1955 album Cliff with Strings.
A bit of a stretch to get to the concert's theme but a very tasty, jazzy piece.

There was lots of John William's music on the program as you'd expect. He's a great composer. He seems to have an inexhaustible ability to imagine catchy, effective and appropriate themes. Does much of the music sound similar?Certainly, but, to the untutored ear so do many Haydn symphonies or Bach organ works. And don't forget, in addition to Star Wars and Indiana Jones he wrote the heart-rending score of Schindler's List.

They even brought Imperial Storm Troopers, Princess Leia and Darth Vader out for the Imperial March. The audience lapped it up. Me, not so much. It just distracted from the music.

An interesting choice was The Chase from Jerry Goldsmith's score to the original Planet of the Apes. It's a twelve-tone work and Martin had the cellos play a pizzicato version of the row for the audience to hear. Some of them even raised their hands when asked if they'd ever heard of Arnold Schoenberg. The piece stands up very well as a concert piece and was an effective contrast to the rest of the music, all of which was very melody driven.

Damn you! God damn you all to hell!

There was a Star Trek medley with music from the various TV series by four different composers. They also played a couple of cues from the original series. One was for a fight between Kirk and Spock and the music was reused in other episodes. Martin confessed something that confirms, in my eyes anyway, his extraordinary musical ability. The "fight" music is not available in written form at all. Martin had  faithfully transcribed the music, orchestration and all, from a recording.

That I don't have the typical listener's ear became very evident at opening of the second half. I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of TV themes but I can sing lots of those that I've heard, some from my childhood. The program told us we'd hear Marius Constant's short pieces that were used as the opening of The Twilight Zone. I knew immediately what to expect.

Apparently, many in the audience didn't. If you aren't old enough to watch TV in the Sixties that's understandable but if you were and watched TV? When the music started the buzz of recognition from audience members nearly drowned out the orchestra. Then, Martin recited Rod Serling's opening monologue so it was impossible to hear the music. Too bad.

The hall was nearly sold out last night, the biggest crowd of the season. For an orchestra struggling to build an audience, it raises a quandary. If a concert like this can be so successful, why not do it more often?

The answer is disturbingly obvious and possible intractable. The audience for pops concerts and the audience for orchestral concert music overlap, but are not identical. Straight serious music concerts don't usually draw the former. It's less clear who amongst the latter group attend pops concerts. Many people who are interested in hearing Brahm's Fourth Symphony, which the HPO will play the next time out, won't pay to hear a crossover vocalist like Basia Bulat (who has sung with the HPO) and aren't going to be tolerant of audience members who pull out their cell phones to take a photo, or talk off and on through the concert.

It'll be very, very interesting to see what the new Artistic Director and Principal Conductor will do to program the next season.

Chapman Stick

I'd hear of the Chapman Stick some time ago and was reminded of it the other day when somebody posted this video of Bob Culbertson's virtuoso performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps on Facebook. I think you'll agree it's an extraordinary performance.

He demonstrates many of the possibilities of this instrument which integrates the potential for electronic instruments that were becoming available in the Seventies much as Les Paul had done with the electric guitar twenty five-years earlier.

I was interested to learn more about the purely technical aspects and abilities of the instrument. Fortunately Emmett Chapman, the instrument's inventor, is also there on YouTube. He doesn't play it nearly as well as Culbertson but his explanation is clear enough for me, at least.  

A little about composer Michael Torke

Some 25 years ago there was a controversy about a piece of New Music written in the style of Beethoven. I wasn’t listening to much recorded New Music in those pre-internet days. I was writing it and having it performed in live concerts. I never heard the piece which may be just as well since I’ve since read some of its execrable reviews. I’ve searched on-line for a recording, of even an excerpt, but to no avail.

I only realized a few days ago that the composer of that work was none other than Michael Torke. Mass (the piece that apparently sounded like Beethoven) must be one of his rare “misses” (even Beethoven missed with Wellington’s Victory) because most of his music that I have heard is extraordinary.

Torke has a unique musical voice. Whereas many New Music composers are concerned in large part with originality and distinctiveness, Torke takes, as his sources, familiar themes and textures. He then tumbles them up in structures which are not those of the styles of music from which they are drawn, resulting in pieces which are immediately engaging but not necessarily easily understood. He says that initial rehearsals of his music are very calm because the musicians see, on the page in front of them, notation and musical ideas which are familiar to them. 

Critics list his influences. Minimalism is one that I can credit, but, on the surface, Torke’s music shares very little with that of Philip Glass or Steve Reich. Jazz is also cited but, to my ear, his pieces have about as much to do with jazz as Stravinsky’s Ragtime has with Scott Joplin or Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cakewalk with minstrelsy. 

If I have a reservation about Torke’s music it is that, once a piece is launched, the tempo and mood usually remain pretty much the same throughout. This can be tedious at times.

Torke’s best known piece is Javelin which was written for the Atlanta Symphony at the time of the 1996 Olympics. It’s an overture, a ten minute curtain raiser and a pretty good introduction to his music.

But I’m recommending that you listen to Mojave, a sixteen minute concerto for marimba. I’m a big fan of piano concertos and this piece is quite a lot like one. The mallet player, Mike Truesdell, is a real virtuoso and the Brabants Orkest (don’t you love Dutch?) accompanies him wonderfully.

You’ll notice that he seems to have solved the minimalist quandary: How often can I repeat something before it’s too often? He gets it right.

If this piece inspires you, try to find a recording of another wonderful work, Bright Blue Music from Color Music. It was written before Mass and there are certainly echoes of Beethoven and other Nineteenth Century masters in it. 

Tchaikovsky at the HPO

We took in the Hamilton Philharmonic’s first concert of 2015 last night (Sat. Jan. 17) in the Great Hall at Hamilton Place. The second balcony was occupied by students and alumni of McMaster University as the orchestra continues its practice of reaching out to the wider community in an effort to build their audience and subscriber base.

The conductor was Music Director Candidate Theodore Kuchar. He’s presently the Music Director and Conductor of the Fresno Philharmonic and the Reno Chamber Orchestra. He has, in the past, performed the same role for the Janáček Philharmonic (formerly the Czech Radio Orchestra) and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. He’s also conducted recordings of more than 90 CDs.

The program was comprised of the overture to Verdi's La Forza Del Destino, Glazunov’s Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. On this occasion there were twenty violins to balance the full orchestral winds and percussion. 

They opened with the Verdi overture. There was good definition in the playing. Verdi’s counterpoint between the sections was clear. However, the brasses and percussion overwhelmed the strings when they played together. The overall effect seemed to lack cohesion and didn’t seem sufficiently lyrical. The oboe solos were handled nicely Jon Peterson.

I’d taken the precaution of listening to the unfamiliar Glazunov piece ahead of time. It’s in four movements but is played without a break. My impression at the end of the performance was the same as I’d had after listening to the recording. It’s sophisticated music, craftsmanly and well worked out, but not very memorable. The influential composer Rimsky-Korsakov was Glazunov’s teacher and Glazunov succeeded him as Principal of the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Corey Cerovsek

Soloist Corey Cerovsek played beautifully although not as impressively as Blake Pouliot had done with the Mendelssohn concerto a couple of months ago. Some might be troubled by Cerovsek’s pronounced vibrato, although I was not. This concerto includes some marvellous overtone passages and also stretches of impressively executed double stops. 

After the break, the orchestra played Tchaikovsky’s final symphony. I don’t enjoy Tchaikovsky’s music as I did when I was a young person and hadn’t a very wide musical experience. It is ideal music for someone just beginning to listen to serious music. Today I find it overly sentimental and unbearably repetitive. These are precisely the characteristics that appeal to those who love this music.

For all that, the orchestra made a fine sound throughout. The strings produced the lush sound the music requires particularly when the violins played unison lines. First bassoonist Melanie Eyers made the most of her solos. First clarinetist Stephen Pierre played convincingly throughout the concert. 

Some of the audience applauded each movement. This was especially annoying after the third movement march which ends triumphantly and should lead quietly and seamlessly into the tragic Adagio Lamentoso of the finale. I suspect many in the hall thought the symphony had ended. I wonder whether they were surprised or disappointed when the orchestra began to play again.

Altogether this was the least engaging of the four concerts we have heard this season although some of that is attributable to personal taste. Tchaikovsky is back in the next concert with the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, much shorter than a symphony and programmatic to boot. There will be a scene from the Berlioz Romeo et Juliette. Finally, they’re playing the First Suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Ballet. It’s a monument, an important work in the 20th Century orchestral repertoire. That, I’m really looking forward to!

Hamilton Philharmonic

Romeo and Juliet

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Great Hall

Hamilton Place 

Brilliance: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto at the HPO

Brilliance: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto at the HPO

Midway through the ethereal slow movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto Saturday night, a single silver star drifted down from high above the stage and settled amongst the second violins. It was like a celestial comment on the playing of the soloist, Blake Pouliot. He’d have had the audience in the palms of his hands, if they hadn’t been full of violin. 

I hadn’t expect much of this concert built around this overly familiar concerto, a very short Canadian piece and a symphony I’d last heard performed by a student orchestra. 

I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

Pouliot really put on a show and I joined the other members of the audience who spontaneously rose to their feet as he completed the virtuosic arpeggios that bring the concerto’s finale to a close. I’d hoped for an encore but, on this occasion, didn’t get one. 

Pouliot is but 20 years old, as young or younger than the MacMaster footballers whom we watched play in the Vanier Cup. He is tall, with a forelock that falls over his face, like a latter day Paganini. He is completing his training in Los Angeles but began playing concertos with orchestras at the age of 11. A violinist to watch. 

While the Mendelssohn was surely the highlight of the evening, the rest of the program was nearly as exciting.

Conductor Stilian Kirov, who is auditioning for the Hamilton Philharmonic’s Music Director’s position, is a native of Bulgaria but has been the Assistant Conductor of the Seattle Symphony for the last three years. He first led the orchestra in a spirited performance of Canadian Composer Glen Buhr’s short overture Jyotir (Brilliance). It’s already 25 years since Buhr wrote it and deserves to be better known.  It was played, as its title indicates, at breakneck speed, and displays the dexterity of the woodwinds, most notably the piccolo which is exposed at the top of the orchestra. Percussionist Jean-Norman Iadeluca, playing tuned toms and a kick bass, was featured in the penultimate section.

After the break they played Beethoven’s Second Symphony. In spite of its number (he wrote nine symphonies) it is not an early work. Beethoven was 33 and in mid-career when he composed it. While not as familiar or often played as the later ones, it sounds a lot like them, especially the Eroica (#3) and the best known Fifth. This is why so many in the audience, familiar with its style, could so easily appreciate it and the beautiful, sometimes spectacular, playing of our wonderful professional orchestra. 

The orchestra will next play Verdi's Forza del Destino overture, Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony and the Glazunov Violin Concerto. Theodore Kuchar conducts and Corey Cerovsek is the violin soloist. It’s on Saturday, January 17th at 7:30 and tickets are available at the orchestra’s website.