Joyful

Salubrious Saturday: Duet for Two Violins and Orchestra, Steve Reich

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I adore Steve Reich.  Adore him.  He is one of my top ten favorite composers, and has influenced my life enormously.  This blog will feature some of his other work later on.  There are, however, a fair number of people I know who don’t enjoy Steve Reich at all.  (Hi, Mom.  Oh hey there, third ex-boyfriend on the left.)  It’s more than understandable.  There isn’t a discernible melody, for starters, nor an easily explainable rhythm, which leads some to conclude that Reich’s music is pretty pointless.  When I play this piece, however, some of them warm up to the idea.  (Hi again, Mom.  Smell you later, third ex-boyfriend on the left.)  Though it keeps to the general Reich-ian aesthetic of repetitive minimalism, it’s also beautifully – and accessibly – lyrical.  It sounds like Vaughan Williams’s lark when it was still young and went cruising with its best friend, before it grew up, went to Groton and Yale, got its medical degree, and became an elegant, staid, and entirely boring lark that ate a light dinner and retired early with some Tennyson poems.  (Yes, yes, “Better not be at all than not be noble,” good for you.)  This piece makes me feel like I just took in a lungful of fresh air on the first day of spring.  Speaking of lungfuls of air, I am hoping to go for my first long training run today to prepare for the half-marathon I foolishly signed up for, and perhaps this piece will convince me it’s warmer than 20 degrees outside.  Happy Saturday!

P.S.  I took the photo in the video in Kiev, Ukraine.  What a wacky place, Ukraine.  More on that in a later post.

P.P.S.  I am of course in no way maligning Groton or Yale.  As they say, some of my best friends went to Groton and Yale.

Termagant Tuesday: “Auld Lang Syne,” Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band

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No sound makes a person happier than a jazz band from New Orleans.  Not the laugher of little children, not the soothing thrumming sound an ATM makes when it dispenses your money, not the person you’ve had your eye on saying “I’ve loved you for ages,” nothing.  Nada.  The big donut.  There is an absolute riot of fantastic Louisiana and other varieties of Dixieland jazz versions of Auld Lang Syne, and your Yankette struggled mightily over which one to pick.  I almost went with The Kings of Dixieland, because, well, they’re The Kings, but this version is so much rowdier and it sounds like they’re just having a ball.  So let’s join them (and their singing at 03:02), shall we?  Pop the champagne, crank up the volume, grab your someone, and take a spin around the room.  May you and yours have the very happiest of New Years, and may 2014 bring you everything you deserve.  WHO DAT!

Modernism Monday: “Simple Things,” Paolo Nutini

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Oh, Monday.  Poor, maligned Monday.  It gets such a bad rap.  No matter how much you adore your job, sometimes the sound of the word Monday just makes you want to say “sod it all” and hide in the bathtub.  Especially difficult to stomach is the first Monday after Christmas.  Helpfully, delightful Scottish singer Paolo Nutini has written a song that puts the whole “work” jag in quite the healthy context.

Additionally appropriate for this specific Monday is the song’s self-determination theme that makes it a good one to listen to in these last days of 2013.  Remember those resolutions you made in 2012?  Any remaining that you can (or want to) accomplish in the next two days?  Anything about your life you’ll resolve to change in 2014?  (Editor’s note: HOLY CRAP 2014.  I feel so old.  It was fourteen years ago I rang in the 2000’s with champagne floats.  Never having a champagne float again has been a fantastically easy resolution to keep.)

Throwback Thursday: “Hodie Christus Natus Est,” Jan Sweelink

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In the spirit of Christmas, this blog’s very first post – helpfully on a Thursday – will fit the season.  Feast your ears on Sweelink’s ecstatic “Hodie,” which is three and a half minutes of barely controlled (for a Baroque dude) excitement about the birth of Jesus.  The best part of the piece is at 2:42 when the choir sounds like it’s splitting apart in competition to see who can produce a happier “Alleluia.”  It’s an absolute delight to sing, and every time you realize that you’re involuntarily dancing.