Monday, April 28, 2008
Spanish class
I am in week four of my second Spanish class. I finally learned how to say "What is this?" Is that odd? Is that no longer the second thing one learns in a foreign language, after "My name is...?" Has it ever been, or have I imagined this?
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Joe's Noodle House
A week ago Saturday, as I was returning from my hike in the Catoctin Mountains along I-270, it occurred to me that I was passing through Rockville, MD, and therefore close to Joe's Noodle House. It was almost lunchtime, and since I am hardly ever up in those parts these days, stopping to pick up some food from Joe's was a no-brainer.
Joe's is one of a handful of truly authentic Chinese restaurants in the area, the kind of food you would not normally find outside of major cities' Chinatowns, if that, and every meal I have ever had there was spectacularly good. The problem is that it is very small, and befitting a restaurant of its quality, is usually packed, so much so that the line is literally out the door. On this occasion, however, it was early enough for it to be relatively uncrowded, and in any case, I was planning to get my food to go (something I rarely do) and eat it at home. After perusing the menu for a few minutes, I settled on Szechuan Dry Beef Saute. "Have you ever head it?" the owner, who usually takes orders at the cash register, asked. "No," I replied, "but I've had something similar elsewhere," referring to a delicious, and very spicy, Szechuan beef dish I've had at TemptAsian Cafe (a topic for another entry). "It's the spiciest dish we make," she told me, and described its ingredents -- whole red chile pods, lots of black pepper, and other spices, used to season dry, jerky-like beef, carrots and celery. "It's designed to numb your tongue," she concluded. "Would you like us to tone it down a little?" I contemplated, but only for a second. "No, I'd like to have the authentic version," I replied resolutely.
As the lunch crowd was slow to arrive for some reason, the owner, whose name I didn't know but who was unfailingly friendly and pleasant and spoke excellent English, chatted a bit, mostly about running (I was wearing a t-shirt I had received at a 10K race I ran a couple of years ago). About ten minutes later, the food was ready, I thanked her again, and sped home to have lunch.
I pride myself on not only being able to eat, but actually enjoying, extremely spicy food. Only once in my life have I been served a meal that I thought was too hot. It was at a Thai restaurant in Tempe, AZ, many years ago. I suppose I should have expected this from a Thai restaurant that moved into a space formerly occupied by a Western-themed steakhouse and did not change a single element of the original decor. Even then, however, I could, and did, eat the food I ordered. I merely thought that had it been a little less hot, the flavors would have come through better, and I could have saved the waiter the trouble of constantly having to refill my water glass. Joe's was on an entirely different level. It was without a doubt the hottest thing I have ever tasted, by several orders of magnitude. I ate about a third of the very generous portion, and in the process drank a beer (nothing like a good cold beer after a long hike in the heat) and about half a gallon of water. Joe's certainly believed in truth in advertising -- my tongue was decidedly numb. Most of the the impact, I believe, was made by the way the red chiles were used. They were whole, with tops still intact, and therefore their seeds still inside, and they appeared to be thrown into the wok dry, without being soaked beforehand. Many of the brittle pods then cracked open, spilling the seeds, which contain lethal amounts of capsacin, the substance that makes hot peppers hot, into the rest of the ingredients.
Here is the amazing thing, though: it was absolutely delicious. There was so much complex flavor that it cut right through the heat, intense though that was. The black pepper flavor was obvious, along with some citrusy sourness and some other mysterious, fragrant, almost cinammony spice. The beef was crunchy and tender at the same time, complemented nicely by the plentiful carrot, celery and onion. The overall effect was overpoweringly intense, but one of the most delicious things I've had in a long time. As I was finishing the meal, reeling from the sensory overload it provided, it occurred to me that this was the authentic version of the saucy, flabby, and, if you're lucky, very slightly tingle-inducing dish most Chinese-American restaurants call "Szechuan Beef."
Joe's is one of a handful of truly authentic Chinese restaurants in the area, the kind of food you would not normally find outside of major cities' Chinatowns, if that, and every meal I have ever had there was spectacularly good. The problem is that it is very small, and befitting a restaurant of its quality, is usually packed, so much so that the line is literally out the door. On this occasion, however, it was early enough for it to be relatively uncrowded, and in any case, I was planning to get my food to go (something I rarely do) and eat it at home. After perusing the menu for a few minutes, I settled on Szechuan Dry Beef Saute. "Have you ever head it?" the owner, who usually takes orders at the cash register, asked. "No," I replied, "but I've had something similar elsewhere," referring to a delicious, and very spicy, Szechuan beef dish I've had at TemptAsian Cafe (a topic for another entry). "It's the spiciest dish we make," she told me, and described its ingredents -- whole red chile pods, lots of black pepper, and other spices, used to season dry, jerky-like beef, carrots and celery. "It's designed to numb your tongue," she concluded. "Would you like us to tone it down a little?" I contemplated, but only for a second. "No, I'd like to have the authentic version," I replied resolutely.
As the lunch crowd was slow to arrive for some reason, the owner, whose name I didn't know but who was unfailingly friendly and pleasant and spoke excellent English, chatted a bit, mostly about running (I was wearing a t-shirt I had received at a 10K race I ran a couple of years ago). About ten minutes later, the food was ready, I thanked her again, and sped home to have lunch.
I pride myself on not only being able to eat, but actually enjoying, extremely spicy food. Only once in my life have I been served a meal that I thought was too hot. It was at a Thai restaurant in Tempe, AZ, many years ago. I suppose I should have expected this from a Thai restaurant that moved into a space formerly occupied by a Western-themed steakhouse and did not change a single element of the original decor. Even then, however, I could, and did, eat the food I ordered. I merely thought that had it been a little less hot, the flavors would have come through better, and I could have saved the waiter the trouble of constantly having to refill my water glass. Joe's was on an entirely different level. It was without a doubt the hottest thing I have ever tasted, by several orders of magnitude. I ate about a third of the very generous portion, and in the process drank a beer (nothing like a good cold beer after a long hike in the heat) and about half a gallon of water. Joe's certainly believed in truth in advertising -- my tongue was decidedly numb. Most of the the impact, I believe, was made by the way the red chiles were used. They were whole, with tops still intact, and therefore their seeds still inside, and they appeared to be thrown into the wok dry, without being soaked beforehand. Many of the brittle pods then cracked open, spilling the seeds, which contain lethal amounts of capsacin, the substance that makes hot peppers hot, into the rest of the ingredients.
Here is the amazing thing, though: it was absolutely delicious. There was so much complex flavor that it cut right through the heat, intense though that was. The black pepper flavor was obvious, along with some citrusy sourness and some other mysterious, fragrant, almost cinammony spice. The beef was crunchy and tender at the same time, complemented nicely by the plentiful carrot, celery and onion. The overall effect was overpoweringly intense, but one of the most delicious things I've had in a long time. As I was finishing the meal, reeling from the sensory overload it provided, it occurred to me that this was the authentic version of the saucy, flabby, and, if you're lucky, very slightly tingle-inducing dish most Chinese-American restaurants call "Szechuan Beef."
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Hiking
Last Saturday, I took J. to the BWI airport for a morning flight. We were there by 6:15 a.m., for a 7:30 departure, i.e. we had to get out of bed around 4:00 that morning. The logical thing for me to do, once I dropped her off, would have been to drive back home and climb back into bed, but figuring that my sleep was already destroyed, I headed West out of Baltimore to Frederick, stopped for some breakfast, then headed North to the Catoctin Mountain Park for my first hike of the year.
Catoctin has the bad fortune of being next door to Camp David, so whenever POTUS is anywhere in the vicinity, Park Service closes a large section of the park so that the Marine detail assigned to guard Camp David can sweep through the woods continuously until the Chief Executive is safely back on his helicopter and headed home to the White House. Normally, these closures are announced on the NPS web site, but as luck would have it, for one reason or another they didn't this time, so I showed up to find at least 80% of the park off limits. Enough was still open, however. I was not able to hike to Hog Rock (my original plan), but I managed to stay in the woods for about three hours, cover about six or seven miles and see two beautiful overlooks.
The terrain was surprisingly barren and wintry. Down here, everything is pretty much green already, but up there, a scant 65 miles North, there was only the barest sign of new leaves peeking tentatively out of their buds on one or two species of tree. As seen from the trail, the rolling hills of Frederick County were a uniform brown, like some gargantuan, cosmic groundhogs sprawled upon the earth. At the same time, however, the bugs were rampant, especially at higher elevations. I did not expect so many until sometime in May, but here they were. Nevertheless, it was nice to wander through the woods for a few hours, and the early morning hour made for mercifully few other hikers – I met only two.
Catoctin has the bad fortune of being next door to Camp David, so whenever POTUS is anywhere in the vicinity, Park Service closes a large section of the park so that the Marine detail assigned to guard Camp David can sweep through the woods continuously until the Chief Executive is safely back on his helicopter and headed home to the White House. Normally, these closures are announced on the NPS web site, but as luck would have it, for one reason or another they didn't this time, so I showed up to find at least 80% of the park off limits. Enough was still open, however. I was not able to hike to Hog Rock (my original plan), but I managed to stay in the woods for about three hours, cover about six or seven miles and see two beautiful overlooks.
The terrain was surprisingly barren and wintry. Down here, everything is pretty much green already, but up there, a scant 65 miles North, there was only the barest sign of new leaves peeking tentatively out of their buds on one or two species of tree. As seen from the trail, the rolling hills of Frederick County were a uniform brown, like some gargantuan, cosmic groundhogs sprawled upon the earth. At the same time, however, the bugs were rampant, especially at higher elevations. I did not expect so many until sometime in May, but here they were. Nevertheless, it was nice to wander through the woods for a few hours, and the early morning hour made for mercifully few other hikers – I met only two.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Europa Galante
J. and I went to hear Europa Galante at the Library of Congress Wednesday night. EG is one of Europe's preeminent period instrument ensembles, and are quite a name in early music circles. I was pleasantly surprised that they were coming to the LoC, where tickets are essentially free (you pay only the Ticketmaster service charge) as opposed to being presented by someone like WPAS, which would probably charge upwards of $40. I was less surprised that the show actually sold out; good thing our friends J.&N. and we bought our tickets early.
The concert was fantastic. The group sounded fabulous, the program was both interesting and mostly good (not necessarily the same thing in early music), and the size of LoC's Coolidge Auditorium was perfect for the size of EG's forces – six violins (three first, three second), one viola, a continuo section of harpsichord, theorbo, cello and bass, plus their leader Fabio Biondi soloing, mostly on violin. Most of the program was new to me – I was familiar only with Vivaldi's famous D-minor concerto from L'estro armonico, of which EG used the an arrangement for two violins and cello and played at breakneck speed. Vivaldi, in fact, dominated the program. They opened with his sinfonia from La Senna festeggiante. Sinfonias were short overtures, usually in three movements, to longer works. When performed by themselves, they became the classic three-movement (fast-slow-fast) baroque concerto. This one was apparently written as an introduction to a large-scale celebratory oratorio. It is a solid work, not one of Vivaldi's most memorable, but from the first note EG's sound was absolutely glorious.
Period instruments sound noticeably different from their modern counterparts even on record, but played live, the contrast is dramatic. The sound is typically darker and the attack softer, but they lose nothing in expressiveness. They typically sound thinner, not in the sense that bass frequencies are lacking, but in the sense that the overtones are more sparse, helping to clear up dense counterpoint. Detractors insist that the sound is wimpy, but in the hands of a group like EG, there was plenty of brio and energy. In fact, they were fairly jumping out of their skins on the fast movements. Though in theory the instruments don't project well, EG's sound was very balanced, and I had no trouble hearing anyone, not even the theorbo, a notoriously quiet instrument.
They followed the Vivaldi with a violin concerto of Jean-Marie Leclair, with Biondi soloing. I had not hear Leclair before, though I've heard him mentioned. The concerto was attractive, especially the slow movement, and Biondi's soloing was impressive. They closed the first half with a suite by Purcell, one of the highlights. Aside from Vivaldi and Bach (and maybe Couperin), Purcell is about the only baroque composer with a distinctive, readily identifiable style. People don't usually talk about an English style when discussing late seventeenth – early eighteenth century instrumental music, but I think Purcell is proof that there was one. I'm not sure I could put into words what makes him unique, but his music definitely has a certain sound. The suite EG played consisted of nine short dance-based movements, with violins sitting out three of them (two airs and the jig), leaving Biondi accompanied by just the continuo section and creating an even more intimate and sparse sound. The jig, in particular, was interesting – slower than what I expected, nothing you could actually dance a jig to (not that I would know...), but it had that telltale Scottish/Irish sound, with a strong attack on the downbeats and a lopsided, “rolling egg” rhythm.
EG opened the second half with one of the most beautiful and fascinating works I've heard in a long time, and easily the highlight of the show – Vivaldi's double concerto for viola d'amore and lute. Viola d'amore is an interesting beast – a bit larger than a modern viola and slightly misshapen, it has six strings tuned in thirds, plus some drone strings under the soundboard, giving it a very resonant, nasal, exotic quality. A violin with a bit of bagpipe mixed in, if you will. Biondi played exceptionally well, as did his lutenist Giangiacomo Pinardi. The entire concerto was gorgeous from first note to last. I must get a recording.
They continued with the Vivaldi D-minor concerto I mentioned above, and closed with Suite “Les Nations” -- a collection of short works by secondary Baroque composers from different countries that Biondi assembled into a suite. The only composers familiar to me were Telemann and Biber, and none of the pieces really stood out, but the suite as a whole did prove that while the best of baroque music is absolutely sublime, the vast majority is generic. The six composers represented all sounded exactly the same.
All in all, a great concert. Even if not every piece was earth-shattering, EG's sound alone was worth it.
On an unrelated topic, I should mention that J.&N. and J. and I had dinner at Montmartre near Eastern Market before the concert, and I was served skate wing with sauteed lettuce. Yes, lettuce. I've never had sauteed lettuce before, and now I will ensure I will never have it again. C.S. says that the idea was probably an effort to contain rising food costs. I guess Montmartre wants to be able to retain its status as one of the best deals in the city, high-end fare at mid-level prices. It's a noble ideal, but sauteed lettuce is way too high a price to pay for it. Personally, I'd rather pay $2 or $3 more for my entree.
The concert was fantastic. The group sounded fabulous, the program was both interesting and mostly good (not necessarily the same thing in early music), and the size of LoC's Coolidge Auditorium was perfect for the size of EG's forces – six violins (three first, three second), one viola, a continuo section of harpsichord, theorbo, cello and bass, plus their leader Fabio Biondi soloing, mostly on violin. Most of the program was new to me – I was familiar only with Vivaldi's famous D-minor concerto from L'estro armonico, of which EG used the an arrangement for two violins and cello and played at breakneck speed. Vivaldi, in fact, dominated the program. They opened with his sinfonia from La Senna festeggiante. Sinfonias were short overtures, usually in three movements, to longer works. When performed by themselves, they became the classic three-movement (fast-slow-fast) baroque concerto. This one was apparently written as an introduction to a large-scale celebratory oratorio. It is a solid work, not one of Vivaldi's most memorable, but from the first note EG's sound was absolutely glorious.
Period instruments sound noticeably different from their modern counterparts even on record, but played live, the contrast is dramatic. The sound is typically darker and the attack softer, but they lose nothing in expressiveness. They typically sound thinner, not in the sense that bass frequencies are lacking, but in the sense that the overtones are more sparse, helping to clear up dense counterpoint. Detractors insist that the sound is wimpy, but in the hands of a group like EG, there was plenty of brio and energy. In fact, they were fairly jumping out of their skins on the fast movements. Though in theory the instruments don't project well, EG's sound was very balanced, and I had no trouble hearing anyone, not even the theorbo, a notoriously quiet instrument.
They followed the Vivaldi with a violin concerto of Jean-Marie Leclair, with Biondi soloing. I had not hear Leclair before, though I've heard him mentioned. The concerto was attractive, especially the slow movement, and Biondi's soloing was impressive. They closed the first half with a suite by Purcell, one of the highlights. Aside from Vivaldi and Bach (and maybe Couperin), Purcell is about the only baroque composer with a distinctive, readily identifiable style. People don't usually talk about an English style when discussing late seventeenth – early eighteenth century instrumental music, but I think Purcell is proof that there was one. I'm not sure I could put into words what makes him unique, but his music definitely has a certain sound. The suite EG played consisted of nine short dance-based movements, with violins sitting out three of them (two airs and the jig), leaving Biondi accompanied by just the continuo section and creating an even more intimate and sparse sound. The jig, in particular, was interesting – slower than what I expected, nothing you could actually dance a jig to (not that I would know...), but it had that telltale Scottish/Irish sound, with a strong attack on the downbeats and a lopsided, “rolling egg” rhythm.
EG opened the second half with one of the most beautiful and fascinating works I've heard in a long time, and easily the highlight of the show – Vivaldi's double concerto for viola d'amore and lute. Viola d'amore is an interesting beast – a bit larger than a modern viola and slightly misshapen, it has six strings tuned in thirds, plus some drone strings under the soundboard, giving it a very resonant, nasal, exotic quality. A violin with a bit of bagpipe mixed in, if you will. Biondi played exceptionally well, as did his lutenist Giangiacomo Pinardi. The entire concerto was gorgeous from first note to last. I must get a recording.
They continued with the Vivaldi D-minor concerto I mentioned above, and closed with Suite “Les Nations” -- a collection of short works by secondary Baroque composers from different countries that Biondi assembled into a suite. The only composers familiar to me were Telemann and Biber, and none of the pieces really stood out, but the suite as a whole did prove that while the best of baroque music is absolutely sublime, the vast majority is generic. The six composers represented all sounded exactly the same.
All in all, a great concert. Even if not every piece was earth-shattering, EG's sound alone was worth it.
On an unrelated topic, I should mention that J.&N. and J. and I had dinner at Montmartre near Eastern Market before the concert, and I was served skate wing with sauteed lettuce. Yes, lettuce. I've never had sauteed lettuce before, and now I will ensure I will never have it again. C.S. says that the idea was probably an effort to contain rising food costs. I guess Montmartre wants to be able to retain its status as one of the best deals in the city, high-end fare at mid-level prices. It's a noble ideal, but sauteed lettuce is way too high a price to pay for it. Personally, I'd rather pay $2 or $3 more for my entree.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
John McCain
I do not normally comment on domestic politics here, especially if it has to do with a presidential candidate in an election year. I will reluctantly violate my own policy, however, to point out this commentary on John McCain. It is well worth reading carefully, especially for those who reject the intellectual underpinnings of conventional liberalism but want to remain within mainstream politics as voters, and who are therefore inclined to support McCain as the least of all evils. I admit that the Milton Friedman quote at the end is a bit uncompromising for most tastes, but do cut the author some slack and consider it in the context of the piece as a whole.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Relativity
Finished Einstein's Relativity: The Special and the General Theory over the weekend. My copy was subtitled “A simple explanation that anyone can understand.” Basically, it omitted the vast majority of the mathematics behind the theory and just presented the concepts and the justifications for its various claims in simplified form. The only math was the statement of the Lorentz transformation with a demonstration of why it holds for the special case of Newtonian mechanics, and a couple of equations involving Gaussian coordinate systems (systems whose coordinate axes are not straight lines) with a demonstration of the fact that a Euclidean coordinate system is just a special case of a Gaussian one.
I must admit that despite the abysmal translation guilty of the most overstuffed, pompous British academic style, the book did live up to the promise of being understandable by anyone, or at least by me. I can's say, however, that I enjoyed it. I realize in retrospect that I expected the book to change my view of the physical world, my outlook on life even, in some fundamental, earth-shattering way. I expected it to offer insight into the nature of our universe heretofore unavailable to me. That it failed to do. The oft-cited result of the theory of relativity is the fact that clocks slow down when they move at speeds close to the speed of light. This sounds vaguely subversive, but how does it really alter our daily experience? It does not. The only example of his theory's significance that Einstein himself gives is that it explains some of the astronomical observations having to do with distant stars, as well as, in one particular case, the orbit of the planet Mercury. Important for astronomers and cosmologists, no question about it. But for me? Not so much. One could argue that something like this is intrinsically interesting and significant. Fair enough. Years ago, I might have counted myself among those for whom this holds true. For better or for worse, however, I've long since come down to earth, as it were.
I must admit that despite the abysmal translation guilty of the most overstuffed, pompous British academic style, the book did live up to the promise of being understandable by anyone, or at least by me. I can's say, however, that I enjoyed it. I realize in retrospect that I expected the book to change my view of the physical world, my outlook on life even, in some fundamental, earth-shattering way. I expected it to offer insight into the nature of our universe heretofore unavailable to me. That it failed to do. The oft-cited result of the theory of relativity is the fact that clocks slow down when they move at speeds close to the speed of light. This sounds vaguely subversive, but how does it really alter our daily experience? It does not. The only example of his theory's significance that Einstein himself gives is that it explains some of the astronomical observations having to do with distant stars, as well as, in one particular case, the orbit of the planet Mercury. Important for astronomers and cosmologists, no question about it. But for me? Not so much. One could argue that something like this is intrinsically interesting and significant. Fair enough. Years ago, I might have counted myself among those for whom this holds true. For better or for worse, however, I've long since come down to earth, as it were.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Plastics
A colleague of mine is leaving the department. A group of us took him out for a farewell lunch yesterday. We're going to hire a replacement, so on the way back from the restaurant, my boss, another co-worker and I discussed the challenges of finding qualified applicants and, more importantly, what exactly makes someone qualified and how we, as interviewers, can best determine that. My boss studied economics in college but is a spectacularly knowledgeable, skillful and dedicated software developer. He holds an enormous amount of knowledge in his head both about the systems we build and work on every day and the state of our art in general, and is able to pull most of that knowledge up at a moment's notice. He is passionately interested in his work. His comments during our conversation were something along the lines that having a computer science degree is not what determines whether someone is a good developer. That is not news. What he said immediately afterwards, however, was that you don't want to hire someone who majored in computer science because that's what his adviser told him to do. You want to hire someone who learned to code because he liked it and has a project in Source Forge because he is interested. Well, I do not have a project in Source Forge. And while I didn't exactly decide to major in computer science because my advisor told me to, I didn't do it for the love of the work either. It was simply something that promised plentiful employment without boring me to tears the way something like finance would, and I fancied myself decent at mathematics. The scene from The Graduate comes to mind where one of Benjamin's father's friends tells him that plastics are the way of the future, and he should consider going into them. Well, computer science was my plastics. Is that good enough? Probably not.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Brad Mehldau
I used to follow Brad Mehldau's releases pretty closely, but after a while decided it wasn't really worth the time and money to keep up any longer. His experimental Largo didn't do anything for me. In fact, I thought it was a perfect example of a self-indulgent recording that alienates fans (not that there is anything wrong with that). His live double CD Progression was also a bit overwhelming. It wasn't bad, I just didn't see myself sitting down and listening to it repeatedly. And in any case, I already had enough excellent Mehldau in his early records to last me a few years, so I stopped.
Well, a few years have gone by, during which he switched record companies, recorded a disc of songs with Renee Fleming of all people, did a live solo album (by all accounts sublime) and, most recently, replaced his longtime drummer Jorge Rossy with Jeff Ballard. He also did an album of duets with Pat Metheny, which I did pick up, in equal measure for Mehldau and Metheny, and liked a lot. On that record, there were two quartet tunes (the trio plus Metheny) that were the only tunes I didn't care for – far too funky. Now, however, he appears to be back to steady work with a trio, and on a whim I decided to check out their most recent Live.
As the name implies, it was recorded live, at the Village Vanguard in New York, and like Progression, it's a double set. After hearing it a couple of times, I struggled with whether I liked it or not, but finally decided that I did, with a few important caveats.
It has been said countless times that jazz is essentially a live art form, that anyone's live gig is by definition better than the same musician's studio album, or at least a more accurate representation of the real essence of his music. The latter may be true, but I also think that record-making has become sophisticated enough over the decades that even in jazz, there is now a difference in focus between the stage and the studio. Music preformed live is meant to be heard live, and its message risks being lost, diluted or, worse, misinterpreted, when it is recorded and played back long after the event. A little bit of this happens on the Mehldau disc.
I don't doubt for a second that hearing the trio on stage, especially in the intimacy of the Vanguard (the only real jazz club left in New York, for my money), was a transforming experience. On record, however, it can get a bit much unless consumed in well-regulated doses. Mehldau likes to stretch out – really stretch out – when gigging. Most of the tracks here are well over ten minutes long, and the apparent piece de resistance of the set, the cover of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," more on which in a moment, clocks in at close to a half-hour. With only three instruments, this takes real commitment both on the part of the band and the part of the listener. Thankfully, Mehldau is a mind-bogglingly inventive soloist, so no matter how long he chooses to deconstruct and reconstruct a song, you're never bored, and when he is finally done, you feel like you've been taken to some far-away places, but then returned home in one piece. Do a few of these back to back, however, and after a while you're quite simply tired of focusing so intensely for so long. In performance, there is a visual element that helps both to enhance and to break up the intensity, and in any case, a listener's senses are always heightened by the excitement and anticipation of a live show, compared to slouching in his living room chair, but at home the tunes are best taken one or two at a time.
Then there is Ballard. He is a phenomenal drummer, but a phenomenal drummer is a dangerous thing. Mostly, it is the contrast with Rossy that took a lot of getting used to. Rossy was as understated and self-effacing as it is possible to be in today's jazz climate. He was, first and foremost, an accompanist. I loved that and, not to put too fine a point on it, thought that that's what a good jazz drummer ought to be. Ballard is far busier and orders of magnitude more intense. This is natural – most jazz musicians playing in small groups today want equal partners, not accompanists, and drummers do not want to be accompanists any longer. That's simply what you do as improvising musicians in 2008. So I don't begrudge Mehldau his choice. I do, however, miss the slightly more relaxed atmosphere of Mehldau's original trio. I know, I know, not better, just different and all that stuff, but hey, we all have our biases, and these are mine.
In fairness, I should point out that Ballard can swing like mad. He is totally out of the Tony Williams school in that respect. Some drummers in jazz today are basically rock drummers who can read music. Not so with Ballard. He is loud and busy, but never plodding. He also can be understated when he needs to be. On “The Very Thought of You,” he lightly brushes the cymbals for the entire time, a consummate professional.
Finally, there is the material. It is well known that Mehldau is a fan of pop and rock music, including some recent stuff, and he is not shy about trying to play it. If you think about it, this makes total sense. Pop music provided the raw material for jazz for most of its history, so why not now? Do all jazz musicians have to be high-falutin' composers nowadays? The answer to that, some will say, is that back in the day, and I mean way back – Tin Pan Alley, early Broadway musicals, etc. -- pop songs were good. Today, not so much. My knee-jerk reaction is to agree, but I admire Mehldau, himself a prolific composer it so happens, for having the guts to try to prove otherwise. His early attempts – Radiohead's “Exit Music (for a Film)” and Nick Drake's “Riverman” were surprisingly successful. Now, he is going further, with Oasis's “Wonderwall” and Soundgarden's “Black Hole Sun.” I admit that I didn't have either song at my brain's fingertips, as it were, but maybe that's a good thing – I had to take them on their own terms, and focus on the melodic and harmonic essence of the tunes, instead of trying to evaluate whether they were good covers of the originals. I am forced to admit that they work. Once you strip away the crunchy guitars and the pounding drums and the whining vocals (I assume – like I said, I don't know the originals off the top of my head), there really is genuine music under there. Kudos to Mehldau for proving this to doubting thomases like me. "Black Hole Sun," in particular, is quite an achievement. He deconstructs it completely and takes it in all kinds of directions it wasn't meant to go, but it's fascinating the whole way, even though I did eventually forget what I was listening to, and just absorbed each note and chord as they came, too far away from the original melody to stay connected to it in any meaningful way.
The rest of the material is relatively evenly split between standards and Mehldau's originals. The originals vary in quality, and to my ears, on the whole fall short of the best of his earlier tunes, especially his stuff on Places, my personal favorite. The best ones, however, “Buddha Realm” and especially “Secret Beach,” are very nice. “Secret Beach” makes for a nice, sparse, almost ECM-ish vamp. The standards provide a nice foil. The set closes with Coltrane's “Countdown” taken at such breakneck speed that Coltrane himself would have been impressed.
All in all, Live was a good way to return to Mehldau after a hiatus. Maybe I'll check out some of the interim albums I missed, and will definitely keep my eyes, and ears, peeled for new recordings.
Well, a few years have gone by, during which he switched record companies, recorded a disc of songs with Renee Fleming of all people, did a live solo album (by all accounts sublime) and, most recently, replaced his longtime drummer Jorge Rossy with Jeff Ballard. He also did an album of duets with Pat Metheny, which I did pick up, in equal measure for Mehldau and Metheny, and liked a lot. On that record, there were two quartet tunes (the trio plus Metheny) that were the only tunes I didn't care for – far too funky. Now, however, he appears to be back to steady work with a trio, and on a whim I decided to check out their most recent Live.
As the name implies, it was recorded live, at the Village Vanguard in New York, and like Progression, it's a double set. After hearing it a couple of times, I struggled with whether I liked it or not, but finally decided that I did, with a few important caveats.
It has been said countless times that jazz is essentially a live art form, that anyone's live gig is by definition better than the same musician's studio album, or at least a more accurate representation of the real essence of his music. The latter may be true, but I also think that record-making has become sophisticated enough over the decades that even in jazz, there is now a difference in focus between the stage and the studio. Music preformed live is meant to be heard live, and its message risks being lost, diluted or, worse, misinterpreted, when it is recorded and played back long after the event. A little bit of this happens on the Mehldau disc.
I don't doubt for a second that hearing the trio on stage, especially in the intimacy of the Vanguard (the only real jazz club left in New York, for my money), was a transforming experience. On record, however, it can get a bit much unless consumed in well-regulated doses. Mehldau likes to stretch out – really stretch out – when gigging. Most of the tracks here are well over ten minutes long, and the apparent piece de resistance of the set, the cover of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," more on which in a moment, clocks in at close to a half-hour. With only three instruments, this takes real commitment both on the part of the band and the part of the listener. Thankfully, Mehldau is a mind-bogglingly inventive soloist, so no matter how long he chooses to deconstruct and reconstruct a song, you're never bored, and when he is finally done, you feel like you've been taken to some far-away places, but then returned home in one piece. Do a few of these back to back, however, and after a while you're quite simply tired of focusing so intensely for so long. In performance, there is a visual element that helps both to enhance and to break up the intensity, and in any case, a listener's senses are always heightened by the excitement and anticipation of a live show, compared to slouching in his living room chair, but at home the tunes are best taken one or two at a time.
Then there is Ballard. He is a phenomenal drummer, but a phenomenal drummer is a dangerous thing. Mostly, it is the contrast with Rossy that took a lot of getting used to. Rossy was as understated and self-effacing as it is possible to be in today's jazz climate. He was, first and foremost, an accompanist. I loved that and, not to put too fine a point on it, thought that that's what a good jazz drummer ought to be. Ballard is far busier and orders of magnitude more intense. This is natural – most jazz musicians playing in small groups today want equal partners, not accompanists, and drummers do not want to be accompanists any longer. That's simply what you do as improvising musicians in 2008. So I don't begrudge Mehldau his choice. I do, however, miss the slightly more relaxed atmosphere of Mehldau's original trio. I know, I know, not better, just different and all that stuff, but hey, we all have our biases, and these are mine.
In fairness, I should point out that Ballard can swing like mad. He is totally out of the Tony Williams school in that respect. Some drummers in jazz today are basically rock drummers who can read music. Not so with Ballard. He is loud and busy, but never plodding. He also can be understated when he needs to be. On “The Very Thought of You,” he lightly brushes the cymbals for the entire time, a consummate professional.
Finally, there is the material. It is well known that Mehldau is a fan of pop and rock music, including some recent stuff, and he is not shy about trying to play it. If you think about it, this makes total sense. Pop music provided the raw material for jazz for most of its history, so why not now? Do all jazz musicians have to be high-falutin' composers nowadays? The answer to that, some will say, is that back in the day, and I mean way back – Tin Pan Alley, early Broadway musicals, etc. -- pop songs were good. Today, not so much. My knee-jerk reaction is to agree, but I admire Mehldau, himself a prolific composer it so happens, for having the guts to try to prove otherwise. His early attempts – Radiohead's “Exit Music (for a Film)” and Nick Drake's “Riverman” were surprisingly successful. Now, he is going further, with Oasis's “Wonderwall” and Soundgarden's “Black Hole Sun.” I admit that I didn't have either song at my brain's fingertips, as it were, but maybe that's a good thing – I had to take them on their own terms, and focus on the melodic and harmonic essence of the tunes, instead of trying to evaluate whether they were good covers of the originals. I am forced to admit that they work. Once you strip away the crunchy guitars and the pounding drums and the whining vocals (I assume – like I said, I don't know the originals off the top of my head), there really is genuine music under there. Kudos to Mehldau for proving this to doubting thomases like me. "Black Hole Sun," in particular, is quite an achievement. He deconstructs it completely and takes it in all kinds of directions it wasn't meant to go, but it's fascinating the whole way, even though I did eventually forget what I was listening to, and just absorbed each note and chord as they came, too far away from the original melody to stay connected to it in any meaningful way.
The rest of the material is relatively evenly split between standards and Mehldau's originals. The originals vary in quality, and to my ears, on the whole fall short of the best of his earlier tunes, especially his stuff on Places, my personal favorite. The best ones, however, “Buddha Realm” and especially “Secret Beach,” are very nice. “Secret Beach” makes for a nice, sparse, almost ECM-ish vamp. The standards provide a nice foil. The set closes with Coltrane's “Countdown” taken at such breakneck speed that Coltrane himself would have been impressed.
All in all, Live was a good way to return to Mehldau after a hiatus. Maybe I'll check out some of the interim albums I missed, and will definitely keep my eyes, and ears, peeled for new recordings.
Monday, April 7, 2008
J.'s Gig
J. played her concert with the JCC Symphony Saturday night. She gets called every now and then if a regular member of a horn section can't make a given program and they need a replacement. Thankfully they call when the orchestra first starts to rehearse a given program, not right before the concert, so she gets to rehearse for a few weeks and is not expected to sight-read unfamiliar music.
Saturday's program was actually somewhat unusual, no doubt due to the fact that the music director is a musicologist who is more interested in, well, interesting works than popular ones. They started with Weber's Oberon overture, arguably his best-known work, certainly his best-known orchestral work. The orchestra sounded pretty bad on it, mostly due to the strings. Their intonation was poor, and too many players hit too many wrong notes, creating a muddy mess.
It's always the strings that cause problems in amateur orchestras. Years ago in Arizona, when J. was a full-fledged member of the Scottsdale Symphony (it sounds more impressive than it is), the music director would hire a few professional string “mercenaries” who would show up at the last rehearsal and the concert itself and pull the rest of the sections out of the quagmire.
Next up was Chopin's E-minor piano concerto, with one Adam Neiman, apparently a professional, soloing. I always wonder how these arrangements between amateur orchestras and professional soloists work. Did they budget money to pay him his usual fee? Is he a friend of the director and did this as a favor? In any event, he was technically flawless, but I did not enjoy the performance as much as I had hoped, though this was probably not the soloist's fault. He sounded brash and strident to my years, with little lyricism and subtlety to which Chopin's music lends itself so well, but I suspect it was the contrast with the orchestra more than the pianist himself. The strings mostly got their act together on the Chopin, but even at its best, the orchestra did not have the brio and momentum of a well-rehearsed professional group, and sounded, for lack of a better word, lazy. The soloist, in the meantime, was pounding away at his usual level of energy and drive, overwhelming the accompaniment. In addition, evidently friends of the musicians get first row seats, so we were practically underneath the piano, and it was loud.
The orchestra finished the concert with Max Bruch's First Symphony, on which J. did most of her playing, and I am happy to report that it more than made up for the deficiencies of the first half. The symphony is performed extremely rarely – as far as I have been able to find out, and this was corroborated by the director, it has been recorded only twice. In fact, everything by Bruch except for the ubiquitous violin concerto and maybe the Scottish Fantasy is preformed extremely rarely. This is a pity – the Symphony is worth hearing. When J. played snippets of it for me at home (we had to download it from iTunes; none of my usual sources for CDs carried either of the two existing recordings, but iTunes, amazingly, had the Leipzig Gewandhaus with Kurt Mazur doing it), I didn't take to it right away. I felt it didn't have the gravitas of a really great symphony. I was wrong. It isn't up to the standards of the massive symphonies of Bruch's contemporaries (Brahms and Bruckner), and I guess in absolute terms it is a “lighter” work, but when heard in its entirety it is appealing. A few excellent themes, sufficiently bombastic tutti sections, and a gorgeous slow movement with a short but arresting cello solo which the JCC cellist handled well, though she looked really nervous. The strings held it together through most of the symphony, even through the fast and rhythmically difficult scherzo, and fell apart again only at the very end. All in all, a respectable performance of a work that deserves wider exposure.
The saddest part of the whole event was the audience – the already small theatre was really sparsely populated, mostly with orchestra members' friends and a few retirees from the on-site assisted living home. Sure, this is no NSO, but everyone, even the strings, was trying really hard and mostly succeeding, and anyone playing good music with their best effort deserves more attention than the JCC Orchestra got on Saturday (though in fairness, the list price of the tickets, which we didn't have to pay, was outrageously high at $20). C.&S. and K. came to the concert with me – great big thank you to them for supporting J.'s occasional musicianship.
Saturday's program was actually somewhat unusual, no doubt due to the fact that the music director is a musicologist who is more interested in, well, interesting works than popular ones. They started with Weber's Oberon overture, arguably his best-known work, certainly his best-known orchestral work. The orchestra sounded pretty bad on it, mostly due to the strings. Their intonation was poor, and too many players hit too many wrong notes, creating a muddy mess.
It's always the strings that cause problems in amateur orchestras. Years ago in Arizona, when J. was a full-fledged member of the Scottsdale Symphony (it sounds more impressive than it is), the music director would hire a few professional string “mercenaries” who would show up at the last rehearsal and the concert itself and pull the rest of the sections out of the quagmire.
Next up was Chopin's E-minor piano concerto, with one Adam Neiman, apparently a professional, soloing. I always wonder how these arrangements between amateur orchestras and professional soloists work. Did they budget money to pay him his usual fee? Is he a friend of the director and did this as a favor? In any event, he was technically flawless, but I did not enjoy the performance as much as I had hoped, though this was probably not the soloist's fault. He sounded brash and strident to my years, with little lyricism and subtlety to which Chopin's music lends itself so well, but I suspect it was the contrast with the orchestra more than the pianist himself. The strings mostly got their act together on the Chopin, but even at its best, the orchestra did not have the brio and momentum of a well-rehearsed professional group, and sounded, for lack of a better word, lazy. The soloist, in the meantime, was pounding away at his usual level of energy and drive, overwhelming the accompaniment. In addition, evidently friends of the musicians get first row seats, so we were practically underneath the piano, and it was loud.
The orchestra finished the concert with Max Bruch's First Symphony, on which J. did most of her playing, and I am happy to report that it more than made up for the deficiencies of the first half. The symphony is performed extremely rarely – as far as I have been able to find out, and this was corroborated by the director, it has been recorded only twice. In fact, everything by Bruch except for the ubiquitous violin concerto and maybe the Scottish Fantasy is preformed extremely rarely. This is a pity – the Symphony is worth hearing. When J. played snippets of it for me at home (we had to download it from iTunes; none of my usual sources for CDs carried either of the two existing recordings, but iTunes, amazingly, had the Leipzig Gewandhaus with Kurt Mazur doing it), I didn't take to it right away. I felt it didn't have the gravitas of a really great symphony. I was wrong. It isn't up to the standards of the massive symphonies of Bruch's contemporaries (Brahms and Bruckner), and I guess in absolute terms it is a “lighter” work, but when heard in its entirety it is appealing. A few excellent themes, sufficiently bombastic tutti sections, and a gorgeous slow movement with a short but arresting cello solo which the JCC cellist handled well, though she looked really nervous. The strings held it together through most of the symphony, even through the fast and rhythmically difficult scherzo, and fell apart again only at the very end. All in all, a respectable performance of a work that deserves wider exposure.
The saddest part of the whole event was the audience – the already small theatre was really sparsely populated, mostly with orchestra members' friends and a few retirees from the on-site assisted living home. Sure, this is no NSO, but everyone, even the strings, was trying really hard and mostly succeeding, and anyone playing good music with their best effort deserves more attention than the JCC Orchestra got on Saturday (though in fairness, the list price of the tickets, which we didn't have to pay, was outrageously high at $20). C.&S. and K. came to the concert with me – great big thank you to them for supporting J.'s occasional musicianship.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Salt
Finished Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History last night. I'm glad I read it, though I have some reservations about recommending it. The book was chock-full of random facts about salt, its manufacture, and its commerce, and by extension, its impact on the social and political history of the world. In fact, this is Kurlansky's central thesis, to the extent the book has one – salt was so central to so much at so many different times and places throughout history, that we can credit it with the state in which we currently find our world.
The main reason salt was so significant, in his view, is because it was the first, and the most widespread, food preservative. This made perishable food transportable, and therefore a tradeable commodity, spurring commerce that could be conducted beyond the limits of one's immediate community. Unfortunately, this central theme of the book is only obvious in retrospect. The narrative is not well organized, and has nothing unifying the different chapters and sections other than that they all in some way have to do with salt. Kurlansky jumps from factoid to factoid, seemingly at random. Sometimes, he makes a ninety-degree turn in the space of a single page, as if he just thought of something peripherally related to what he was just writing about, but had to set it down before he forgot it.
To be fair, the book does have its strong points, the main one being his thorough research into original sources, especially pre-modern cookbooks. He quotes copiously from everyone starting with Appicius and Pliny the Elder, on through the medieval Mensajer de Paris, up to modern chefs, and he ventures into non-Western, especially ancient Chinese, sources along the way. Some of these recipes are gems – it really gives you a look into how a kitchen functioned in the days before refrigeration, gas cooking or any sort of domestic technology.
I did learn a few things. The most significant, perhaps, is the fact that Gandhi's original issue over which he galvanized the Indian independence movement was a protest against Imperial Britain's oppressive salt-making and salt-taxing policies. I had no idea. Another bit that made me chuckle: the gourmet “colored” salts, the gray sea salt and the red salt, so prized by foodies who pay exorbitant prices for them, acquire their color from impurities, in most cases dirt or clay. While I understand the objection to chemical purification of any food product, I'm not sure I want clay to be the flavor-giving ingredient in my food. I also learned that La Baleine, the French sea salt that comes in slender blue containers that I use daily in my cooking, is made by Morton's, the girl-with-umbrella juggernaut of salt. It does appear to be true to its labeling in that it is sea salt, and it is made in France, in the historical salt-producing region of Aigues-Mortes, but it turns out there is a gray area surrounding the term "sea salt" in general. There are two ways to make salt, by evaporating salt water, and by mining rock salt underground. Kurlansky does mention that only eight percent of Morton's production is table salt, but he does not say how it's made and in what proportions. So the stuff in 89-cent round cardboard drums may in fact come from sea water too. It is the fact that La Baleine is made by natural evaporation in wide, flat beds, rather than by an evaporating machine, that makes it special.
The main reason salt was so significant, in his view, is because it was the first, and the most widespread, food preservative. This made perishable food transportable, and therefore a tradeable commodity, spurring commerce that could be conducted beyond the limits of one's immediate community. Unfortunately, this central theme of the book is only obvious in retrospect. The narrative is not well organized, and has nothing unifying the different chapters and sections other than that they all in some way have to do with salt. Kurlansky jumps from factoid to factoid, seemingly at random. Sometimes, he makes a ninety-degree turn in the space of a single page, as if he just thought of something peripherally related to what he was just writing about, but had to set it down before he forgot it.
To be fair, the book does have its strong points, the main one being his thorough research into original sources, especially pre-modern cookbooks. He quotes copiously from everyone starting with Appicius and Pliny the Elder, on through the medieval Mensajer de Paris, up to modern chefs, and he ventures into non-Western, especially ancient Chinese, sources along the way. Some of these recipes are gems – it really gives you a look into how a kitchen functioned in the days before refrigeration, gas cooking or any sort of domestic technology.
I did learn a few things. The most significant, perhaps, is the fact that Gandhi's original issue over which he galvanized the Indian independence movement was a protest against Imperial Britain's oppressive salt-making and salt-taxing policies. I had no idea. Another bit that made me chuckle: the gourmet “colored” salts, the gray sea salt and the red salt, so prized by foodies who pay exorbitant prices for them, acquire their color from impurities, in most cases dirt or clay. While I understand the objection to chemical purification of any food product, I'm not sure I want clay to be the flavor-giving ingredient in my food. I also learned that La Baleine, the French sea salt that comes in slender blue containers that I use daily in my cooking, is made by Morton's, the girl-with-umbrella juggernaut of salt. It does appear to be true to its labeling in that it is sea salt, and it is made in France, in the historical salt-producing region of Aigues-Mortes, but it turns out there is a gray area surrounding the term "sea salt" in general. There are two ways to make salt, by evaporating salt water, and by mining rock salt underground. Kurlansky does mention that only eight percent of Morton's production is table salt, but he does not say how it's made and in what proportions. So the stuff in 89-cent round cardboard drums may in fact come from sea water too. It is the fact that La Baleine is made by natural evaporation in wide, flat beds, rather than by an evaporating machine, that makes it special.
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