Martin Kalmanoff

I've been processing the papers of Martin Kalmanoff, a songwriter and composer, mainly of operas, who died somewhat recently (not sure when, can't find an obit anywhere). He was sort of an archivist's dream and nightmare simultaneously. A prolific composer who got his music performed somewhat regularly, he didn't seem to ever throw anything out. Anything. Great for having all his music, lousy for having all the bits of newspaper he kept, circling all the concerts he wanted to see in a particular week. (All the programs for those concerts are here too.) Or all the hundreds of pages of little notes he wrote to himself, reminding him to call this or that presenter or conductor, or to buy milk this evening.

He was a driven man. After a successful early career as a songwriter (Elvis recorded one of his tunes), he wrote opera after opera, sometimes not getting a work premiered for many years after it was first written. He endlessly wrote and called people in a lifelong struggle to get his music before the public. It worked, too, more often than not, although his self-regarded masterwork, The Insect Comedy, had to wait around 30 years to have its premiere.

Yes, a driven man, and slightly bonkers, I suspect. After his first marriage failed, he did the computer dating thing in 1967-68 (it was in vogue then) and kept highly detailed notes on the many, many women he dated. Wacko, intense and comedic simultaneously. While working through a collection of at least 50 moving boxes of scores, papers, and who knows what else, one comes to appreciate oddball stuff like that.

RIP Jimmy Giuffre

Jimmy Giuffre died in late April, and I'm finally getting around to writing about him now. He's the only clarinetist that I ever wanted to really sound like. I never really thought about that until now. I've been close with Perry Robinson for close to 20 years, and he's certainly had a huge influence on me as a musician, but I never thought, "I REALLY want to sound like him." The first time I heard "The Jimmy Giuffre Clarinet" album, and especially after hearing the stuff with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow, I knew I wanted to sound like that. (I'm pretty sure I never HAVE sounded like that, however.) I'm a fan of many clarinetists, but Jimmy's sound was so warm, so unbelievably kind and soulful. Its breathiness was like a loved one gently blowing in your ear. Especially in the throat tones and lower registers of the horn, he created a loving bed of sound, the better to deliver what was, in many respects, deeply subversive music: jazz played at a low volume level, without a traditional rhythm section or a piano, on an instrument that had mainly been left behind by the jazz world in the mid-1950s. (He did much other varied work in his later years, but I think he'll be best remembered for the body of work he created from the 1950s until he stopped recording for a while in the early 1960s.)

We always hear people say that certain musicians will get their due at some point in the future, perhaps even the far future, but I often wonder if it's true. Yes, Bach wasn't generally recognized in his time and eventually got the fame he deserved, but I get the feeling that it's sheer luck that people finally started getting a clue about him, not an advancement in general taste or anything like that. Major figures on bully pulpits can drive tastes (like Leonard Bernstein pushing and resurrecting Mahler from oblivion), but I don't see anyone of stature talking about Giuffre very much. I mean, good luck waiting for Jazz At Lincoln Center to offer a tribute to him. Art music of any kind occupies a smaller and smaller space in American society, so if well-known and artistically important musicians of today have to fight for exposure, what hope is there for a figure like Giuffre, a deceased artist who quietly pursued his innovative career and interests, producing music for the ages, but who apparently left behind few people in a position powerful enough to argue for his importance?

The Shul Band

So the Shul Band is playing Barbes in my home borough of Brooklyn this Saturday, the first time we've played outside of Shul or private parties since, well, since we were in Poland in 2005. Should be interesting, since this time we've rehearsed and in general have more of our lower intestinal contents together.

I'm currently producing canons for my composition studies with Mike Longo. It's infuriating like nothing else I've done before. (I seem to always say that when I hit on a new challenge in my studies with him. But it really seems true when I say it.)

Yoga developments: Back in February I sustained an injury to my right upper hamstring (or rather, the tendon that connects the hamstring to my sitbone). This is a common yoga injury, it seems, so I've been working on strengthening the muscle to take the strain off of the tendon, which is slowly but surely healing in the meantime. I've been doing asanas that don't involve stretching the hamstring, which eliminates all the warrior positions. Utkatasana is now my friend, as are sun salutations, sans warriors. The result is that I haven't taken a class since the injury, and won't be able to until I can do warriors without pain. What a drag. But I can still sit, although meditation is as challenging an act (or non-act) as ever.

On the NYPL end, after a recent avalanche of medium-sized collections (Arthur Siegel, Frederick Block and Conductors Guild), and finishing off Margaret Carson (a collection my ex-colleague Stasia started before she took a job in California), I've begun work on an opera composer named Martin Kalmanoff. Looks to be at least the size of the Meredith Monk collection, and not as well-organized. It should take me until at least mid-summer to complete processing of this one.

I'm sick of rain.

Another Suicide, and Marriage

I just finished processing another suicide collection. Or rather, I think it's a suicide. The guy in question is Don Gohman, a songwriter and Broadway composer who's best known for writing the music for a major 1972 flop called Ambassador (based on the Henry James novel The Ambassadors. Yes, you read that right, a musical based on a Henry James novel.) Most of the collection was scores for the show, along with some other shows, most never produced. I found two references on the net that Gohman offed himself after the show failed on Broadway, but nothing definitive like an obituary. In fact, it was very difficult to find ANY information on this guy. But I found a score for a show Gohman worked on in 1974, so if he DID kill himself, it wasn't immediately after the Ambassador fiasco.

Gohman wasn't a total failure. He wrote a lot of stuff with the lyricist Hal Hackady, who's apparently well-known in the theatre world, and they wrote some tunes together that were at least modest hits. In any case, better for me, perhaps, that I don't know too much about this guy.

On a completely, absolutely different note, I got married back in November. I only mention it to show how smart I am that I married Rachel. I may be a musician, but Harriet Snyder didn't raise no fool.

Ken Peplowski

Sometimes it takes me a while to find things I should have seen ages ago. I just discovered Ken Peplowski's blog. I always knew he was hilarious from his banter at gigs, but man, he's possibly even more hilarious in print.

The Shul Band - Instrumental

The best disk I have ever been on is available through CDbaby: The Shul Band - Instrumental. Listen and be healed, children.

Dude, space me

I've been spaced, at last. I've joined the rest of the musical world and established a myspace page. I also run Perry Robinson's myspace page, which made me realize how dumb it was that I didn't have one of my own. Better late than never. It's so much easier to update gig information that way. Like, DUH!