Friday, December 29th, 2003 ... 6:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

Subbing for Romain's Mixed-Up Class classical music show. I do this about once a year and it's always a treat for me.

Highlights this time around: The Jon Anderson track (contrasting with the John Adams original) ... the Rebecca Clarke story ... and the two Bach pieces. I'm hoping to round out the day with the Del Sol Quartet, a Bay Area string quartet. Their recent CD Tear highlights 20th-Century composers of the Americas (including Latin America); great stuff.

Random side note: This is the first time I ever "pre-programmed" a show rather than choosing, on the fly, from an available pool of music.

Format:
ARTIST -- COMPOSER, "TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)

# Janos Negyesy, violin -- John Cage, "Freeman Etudes IX-XII" [excerpt] -- Freeman Etudes I-XVI (Lovely, 1985)

# London Chamber Orchestra, Christopher Warren-Green, director -- John Adams, "Shaker Loops" -- Minimalist: Glass/Adams/Reich/Heath (Virgin, 1990)

Jon Anderson with the London Chamber Academy and the Opio Singers -- John Adams, "Shaker Loops" -- Change We Must (Angel, 1994)

This is an album of Anderson in a classical setting, mostly new pieces, with some old Yes and "Jon and Vangelis" tracks too. Here, he added lyrics to "Shaker Loops" for a 5-minute fly-by. The track, and the album, are not as awful as I'd expected. The CD's quite enjoyable and outpaces most of Anderson's solo work.

Old-school baroque. Dornenburg is a Stanford faculty member who performs annually as part of the Music Department's concert series. He puts on a warm, informal show and, when I saw him, went far in explaining the esoteric notation used in "early" music.

Yizhak Schotten, viola, w/Katherine Collier, piano -- Rebecca Clarke, "Suite for Viola and Piano" -- Viola 1919: Paul Hindemith, Rebecca Clarke, Ernest Bloch (Crystal, 1993)

Yizhak Schotten, viola, w/Katherine Collier, piano -- Ernest Bloch, "Suite for Viola and Piano" -- Viola 1919: Paul Hindemith, Rebecca Clarke, Ernest Bloch (Crystal, 1993)

There's a great story behind these two pieces. Clarke and Bloch participated in a 1919 competition to compose a viola sonata or suite. Judges weren't told the composers' names, so they didn't know Clarke was a woman. Clarke and Bloch ended up tied for the prize, so the tiebreaking vote went to competition organizer Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge ... who did know the composers' identites and cast her vote for Bloch.

Clarke never became famous, but she also never begrudged Bloch the victory; she even wrote a glowing review of Bloch's piece for Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music in 1928.

The Rebecca Clarke Society is devoted to honoring Clarke's work as a landmark woman composer -- and as a composer, period. They're sponsoring an effort to have this Sonata transcribed into a full-blown Concerto for viola and orchestra. More info about the Society, and about Clarke's career, at www.rebeccaclarke.org.

Joey Baron/Robyn Schulkowsky -- "Dinosaur Dance Nr. 1" -- Dinosaur Dances (self-released, 2003)

Drummer Joey Baron is better known in free-jazz circles for hanging out with John Zorn. Schulkowsky has done some classical percussion CDs for the ECM record label. They're apparently an item, living in Amsterdam these days, and have released this CD of playful percussion duets. It's not in wide release; I was told about the CD by the guys at Downtown Music Gallery, a New York City store specializing in free jazz.

Maxim Vengerov, solo violin -- J.S. Bach, possibly; "Sonata" a.k.a. "Tocatta and Fugue" -- Maxim Vengerov Plays Bach/Shchedrin/Ysaye (EMI, 2002)

You know this piece. It's the "Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor," the music used in the original Rollerball movie, the haunted-house organ riff that gets played on commercials every Halloween. There's a theory, though, that the piece was originally a sonata for solo violin, in A minor. Vengerov performed it that way for the concert recorded on this CD, using a transcription edited by Bruce Fox-Lefriche.

Del Sol String Quartet -- Lou Harison, "Variations on a Song of Palestine" -- Tear (self-released, 2003)

* Rick McLaughlin Trio -- Maurice Ravel, "Assev Vif, Tres Rhythme" -- Study in Light (Accurate, 2003)

Jazz interpretation of a Ravel piece, the second movement of his string quartet.

# = Item from KZSU library
* = Item in KZSU rotation

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.