little pain

Take that little pain and stay there;
Rummage through vast loneliness and stay there.

Just before the blossoming of the tip of a twig;
Just before…
Stay there.

You’ve received an incomplete;
You’ll be stuck on some odd planet.
Stay there with me.
With me.

Take that little pain and bind it;
Pile that dusty loneliness and mind it.

Quick cold sharpness of an edge,
Sweet completeness in the falling;
One more push and all the world lies drenched
in some strange light.

Stay there with me.
With me.

a song I’m working on…the melody and piano part were already written simultaneously – I just need to get on my plump, round tuckes and record it so I can post it here! soon, soon.

h

I vant to suck yourr bluuud

Here’s a crazy post (as opposed to all those sane ones) of a nearly 22 minute piece I had the pleasure to perform numerous times a few years back called “Dracula” by David Del Tredici. The piece is composed on a poem titled “My Neighbor” by Alfred Corn. This recording below is with the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra.

I just went through some pictures today from a performance of the piece with Marin Alsop conducting and remembered how much fun it was, and how complete, wonderful, bizarre, imaginative and absolutely bonkers is the world of Mr. Del Tredici.

Give it up to Theremins, baby!!!

New wonderful visual artist

I’m sitting and browsing through a book of an incredible artist, Mexican born Yishai Jusidman and feeling in awe of the all those gifts that seem to be crowding our roofs, just waiting to randomly be pushed down the chimney.

Unknown to me since before this summer, when my awesome brother Yonatan, returning to Israel from a trip to our family in Mexico via Los Angeles, introduced me to this phenomenal creator (and so generously left me the catalogue from the exhibit he had seen of this fellow’s work).

Here’s a picture off the internet, which, of course, doesn’t really do his painting much justice. If an exhibition comes somewhere nearby to where you are, RUN and see it!!! I most certainly will.

Jan. 2, 2010

A recording from long ago, with my dearest friend and most unbelievable pianist, Tali Tadmor. I was sick out of my mind, and she was making a demo as part of her audition for the USC school of music. This year she graduated with her friggin’ doctorate degree.

Happiest New Year everyone. May your year be filled with beautiful music and dear friends.

and if I stumble

About a week ago I spent a little time on my computer doing the usual shmearing of time before bed – ‘Stumbling Upon’ online, when this song crosses my path:

Simply brilliant. Turns out this guy (Oren Lavie) is Israeli, and already a big star, and turns out this unbelievable music video of his has just received a Grammy nomination for “Best Short Form Music Video” (and apparently, as usual, I’m the last person to discover it)…

I just bought a bunch of his wonderful songs on iTunes 

What a crazy time and world we are living in where these bombs of beauty can just randomly fall on our little heads.

There is a conflict in me.
In that I feverishly grasp at who I am;
In that I am constantly understanding where I do not belong;
In that my dreams refuse to hear the language of the pleading of my soul;

This conflict is not sought.
It is within me in all capacity.
And my quest remains hidden from deeper wisdom;

But the ache of forgotten things sometimes stirs -

Reminding of a passion in me,
Wherein I wish to discover who I am;
Upon which I comprehend my true place
And in that lost place I am forever welcoming
the fantom whisperings of my tongue,
and am fully aware of their meaning.

what in heaven’s name is that woman screaming about??!?

That’s the name of my new autobiography. well not really. really it should be ‘here’s a picture of me screaming my head off’.

A few weeks ago I had an audition for the Thomas Ades opera ‘The Tempest’. So of course, I went and learned some excerpts so that I have something to sing. Well, the words ‘really cool yet absolutely insane’ don’t even begin to describe these pieces of music.

Throughout the previous 12 years, with what I have to think of as the-beginning-of-the-madness – the premiere of David Del Tredici’s magnificent ‘The Spider and the Fly’ with the New York Philharmonic (Kurt Masur was conducting and Nathan Gunn was the Baritone) – I have been singing really cool and absolutely insane works.

Here’s three excerpts from that premiere:

Studying music like this is a very weird process for me because, when I practice, it all seems so vocally hard, so heavy, tedious and languid and with-so-much-effort-involved, and since I, many times, manage to give myself a splitting headache, I can only imagine what I’m going to inflict on the poor audience…

Yet somehow (on most occasions) once I’m on a stage and the andrenaline hits, it’s as though my larynx has always lived 47 floors higher. I’m sure some part of the audience still probably reaches anxiously for an aspirin or two (or three?) at intermission, but my head seems to be, at this point, as clear as that of a blond soprano.

I don’t know if it’s the hysterical Israeli within me, or just plain DNA, but for some reason I seem to click with that temperament, and I can truly say that I am grateful that somehow the lunatic wave found me and tangled me up in it’s web.

over and out

Big apples and Big vibratos

A few months past I sang a little beautiful French song written by Paul Cantelon for the soundtrack of the movie that just came out a week or so ago in theatres “New York, I love you”.

It was a fun and bizarre experience. We started off with a very pure vocal tone, that didn’t quite work for the song (and for the producer – who was working it through with us), and it became more and more big-wobbly-opera-singer as the evening progressed, which was a very playful experiment for me. By the end of the evening I was trying to sound like Jessie Norman (‘trying’ being the operative word…).

Here it is for you:

We are just coming back from an magnificent evening with two of Eric and my closest friends, Jonathan Newman and Melissa Schlachtmeyer.

We are in NY for a concert and when the weather is as mild as it has been the last couple of days, this truly is the most glorious city in the world. At the end of each day your feet are sore, your eyes are filled with dust and grit and your throat is raw, you are noticeably a changed human being than the one you woke up as, and it is exhilarating. So in the words of Elmer Fudd: “New Yawk, I wuv you”.

how many jewish mothers does it take?

Here’s the fifth and last in the Yiddish Songs set, and the one that makes all the bubbeles start bawling.

ok. I admit that I’m a bit of a Jewish grandma myself.

V. Rozhinkes mit Mandlen (Abraham Goldfaden 1840-1906)

In dem beys hamikdash
In a vinkl cheyder
Zitst di almone bastsioyn aleyn.

Ir benyochidl idele
Vigt zi keseyder
Un zingt im tsum shlofn a lidele sheyn:

Untern yidele’s vigele
Shteyt a klurvays tsigele
Dos tsigele iz geforn handlen
Dos vet zayn dayn baruf
Rozhinkes mit mandlen
Shlofzhe, yidele, shlof.

V. Raisins and Almonds

In the temple
In a dark room,
Sits the widow, Daughter of Zion, alone.

Her only son, her little one, she rocks
And sings him to sleep with a pretty song:

Under your cradle, little one,
There stands a snow-white baby goat -
The baby goat is a peddler of fruit;
This will be your work too -
Trading in raisins and almonds.
And now sleep, my little one, sleep.

Oy Vey 1+1+1+1

ok, ok, so I”m shelling them out slowly. Only one more to go after this…this one is going to have added a very flourish-y kleyzmer-like clarinet part that isn’t there on the recording (in a sense I feel that the clarinet is more prominent and important in this song than the actual singing…). It’s simple and fun and ridiculous, and I chose it for such because of the contrast with the very last Yiddish song in the set, which is one of my favorite songs of all time. But that’s for the next shell.

IV. Du zolst nit geyn (Chasidic/Folk)

Du zolst nit geyn mit kayn andere, Meydele!
Du zolst nur geyn mit mir.
Du zolst nit geyn tsu der mame in shtubele
Nur kumen zolst du tsu mir.
la-la-la-lay-lay,
la-la-la-lay-lay,
la-la-la-lay-lay-lay-lay-lay!!

IV. You shall go with no other, girl!

You shall go with no other, young maiden!
You must only go about with me.
You shall not go and see your mother in her room,
You must come only to me!
la-la-la-lay-lay,
la-la-la-lay-lay,
la-la-la-lay-lay-lay-lay-lay!!