Kile Smith

In Jailhouse Rock, Elvis plays an ex-con rube hoping to make it in the music business. He’s dragged to a swanky party, where he’s wedged between society snobs who try to look intellectual and hip by discussing modern music. They toss around lingo like “dissonance” and “atonality,” and the names of some musicians, including that of Dave Brubeck. Elvis’s increasing discomfort wells up when the hostess asks his opinion. Rather than revealing his ignorance, he barks crudely at her and stalks out.

Hollywood knows a good stereotype when it sees one, hick or slick, and “Brubeck” meant cerebral, cool, West Coast. The Dave Brubeck Quartet was already one of the hottest ensembles in jazz in the ’50s, playing hundreds of concerts, and releasing multiple LPs, every year. Brubeck’s face had been on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, Jailhouse Rock came out in 1957, and it would still be two years before the Quartet had its incandescent burst into the stratosphere—and into jazz history—with the release of Time Out.

We search for roots of different kinds on Now is the Time, Sunday, December 2nd at 10 pm. Jeremy Gill bases his Book of Hours for piano on the ancient observances of the monastery. The birth of an orchestral season is trumpeted by Tomas Svoboda. Robert Lombardo entrances with mandolin and marimba, and Nathan Davis, with the mbira, or African thumb piano.

The roots of the banjo are also in Africa. Sidiki Conde is joined by banjo while he sings and drums, on his infectious Moriba Djassa.

Who does this sound like?

That’s the first question we ask when we hear music new to us. It’s as true with Havergal Brian’s as with anyone else’s—probably more true, since his music is so rarely heard, and consequently so often new.

If we know anything about him, it’s that his first symphony, the “Gothic,” is called the largest ever written, with brass bands, choirs, harps, drums, and organ along with a gargantuan orchestra. Our knowledge of Havergal Brian usually ends there.

But he wrote 31 other symphonies, and much more music besides. On top of that, 27 of his symphonies and four of his five operas were composed in the last 25 years of his life, and he lived to be 96. On top of that, for most of his life not one note of his music was performed.

Why not?

It’s the composer/electric guitarist Steven Mackey on Now is the Time, Sunday, November 25th at 10 pm. Performed by eighth blackbird, Lonely Motel: Music from Slide considers isolation and self-delusion. A psychologist whose fiancée has abandoned him contemplates his fate while looking at his research slides.

The theater piece also rocks, with homages, Mackey says, to Dowland, Mozart, Stravinsky, Piazzola, and The Beatles.

We travel over different paths on Now is the Time, Sunday, November 18th at 10 pm. Sebastian Currier's Static, the 2007 Grawemeyer Award winner, illuminates the two meanings of the title, from stillness to electricity. Saxophonist and composer Mark Engebretson evokes fresh and engaging melodic inventions in SaxMax.

Daron Hagen walks us from grief to a bright land in the piano trio he calls Wayfaring Stranger.

No matter how you feel about the presidential election, there’s music for you on Now is the Time, Sunday, November 11th at 10 pm. There’s Privilege, New Beginnings, Deploration, or perhaps Vernacular Dances. Maybe you Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Above all, there’s the National Anthem, in a fascinating construction for solo piano.

It’s flickering light and melting images on Now is the Time, Sunday, November 4th at 10 pm. Eric Moe channels the Nightingale ode of Keats by way of flute and piano, and Joseph Waters rocks Vivaldi to a fare-thee-well through a violin and band.

Bertolozzi makes a very large object (the Mid-Hudson Bridge) sing, Stucky does the same with an orchestra, and Neuburg and Amirkhanian mesmerize one violin into receding reflections of shimmering voices.

We call William Grant Still “The Dean of African-American Composers,” and the description strikes us as quaint. Not wrong, since it’s undeniable that Still was the leading Black American composer of concert music (although he opposed the term Black as one that divided people into false groups).

It's ten people hovering over a piano on Now is the Time, Sunday, October 28th at 10 pm. Stephen Scott wrote Paisajes Audibles, Spanish for "Sounding Landscapes," for his Bowed Piano Ensemble and soprano Victoria Hansen. The Spanish, French, and English texts are inspired by the physical landscape Scott has seen on the Canary Islands, and the inner landscapes of imagination.

The "bowed" piano, played with guitar picks, horsehair, fishing line, and percussion mallets, sings like an orchestra. Or a steel drum band. In it you'll hear the voice of jazz, flamenco, West African music, and Terry Riley. It is fun, it is evocative, it is mesmerizing.

It’s exotic with a touch of pop on Now is the Time, Sunday, October 21st at 10 pm. Gandolfi writes tangos for wind ensemble, Hulse is rhythmic and quirky, Rosenblum bends the flute of Patti Monson with electronics, and Coleman dips into the orchestra and tips her hat to the Great American Songbook.

Host Kile Smith brings you Now is the Time, American contemporary music on WRTI-HD2 and the all-classical stream at wrti.org.

PROGRAM:
Michael Gandolfi: Vientos y Tangos