Alexandra Grabarchuk

Alexandra Grabarchuk, a third-year graduate student in the Department of Musicology, traveled to Finland in early December to present some of her pre-dissertation work at the Sibelius Institute’s Radical Music History Symposium.  Alexandra’s project explores radical art rock of the Soviet Union from the mid-‘70s, focusing on the complicated relationships between songwriters and the official Composers’ Union.  Throughout this project, Alexandra has been guided by the mentorship of musicologist Robert Fink and Russian popular music scholar David MacFadyen. Alexandra’s travel was supported by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music Student Opportunity Fund.

Music Department professors Vladimir Chernov and Michael Dean (Chair of the Music Department) will be appearing in the L.A. Opera’s upcoming production of Charles Gounod’s tale of the famous star-crossed lovers, Roméo et Juliette. The conductor for this production will be Placido Domingo.

Professor Dean, as an “L.A. Opera debut artist” will be featured in the role of Gregorio, and Professor Chernov will have the role of Count Capulet.

More information about the cast and production, can be found at: http://www.laopera.com/season/romeo/index.aspx.

This production will run from November 6th through November 26th.

Professor Vladimir Chernov

Chair Michael Dean

“My summer begins with performances on bowed guitar (arpeggione) at the Los Angeles Guitar Festival, and then moves on to various recording projects. These include “Four Bagatelles” for two guitars by UCLA MFA alumnus Buzz Gravelle, “Five Hobo Dreams” for arpeggione and guitar, by Eric Pham, and three of my own songs performed with UCLA Musicology graduate-student Alex Grabarchuk. The recording of Volume One of my PopArt song project (texts by Darwin, Karl Marx, Beatrice Wood, Black Elk, etc.) now complete, will be in production, freeing me up to continue work on volume two. Aside from dabbing my toes in pristine mountain lakes, that’s about it.”

You can also read more about the bowed guitar on previous posts in this blog.

For more about the L.A. Guitar Festival, go to: www.laguitarfestival.com.

Jeremy Mikush, a Ph.D. candidate in the Musicology Department, has been in France since early June practicing his French and doing research in Paris for an article and for his dissertation–thanks to two HASoM SOF grants!

Also, in August, he’ll be performing his own songs as well as those of other composers with biographic and artistic works that speak to queer experience at the second installation of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History in the SoHo district of NYC (http://www.queermuseum.com/home/), giving a lecture-recital on non-traditional sexuality in musical cultures of the not-so-recent history.

All of this will be happening while he is continuing to balance work on his dissertation and his increasing collaboration with theater and performance artists in SF. In October, he will very likely perform with Original SF Cockette member Rumi Missabu in NYC with a hand-picked ensemble, in connection with retrospectives at Lincoln Center as Cockettes material is archived at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. A very busy summer and early fall indeed!

Thanks, Jeremy–it looks like a fun summer!

What first strikes me about John Cale as he comes onstage is his hair. A full rainbow of color sits atop his head. And these colorful locks bestow an unearthly quality to an otherwise unassuming figure. Having acknowledged our applause in kind, soft-spoken words, he bangs out a D minor chord at the keyboard and the orchestra begins to tune.

After microphone levels have been established, rehearsal proceeds rapidly—Mr. Cale is business-like efficient in the warmest way possible. Soon we are awash in an endless plain of mostly bright chords and melodies, stopping only occasionally to stumble over a few notes, a difficult rhythm, or a tricky entrance. Rehearsal ends a good hour and a half early. I like this Cale guy.

Much of this music is about groove. Cale’s drummer looks the part; he seems entranced by his own infectious backbeat. As for me: I’m all but dancing in my chair. I can’t help it. How much groovin’ is too much? During the concert the audience appears, to me, quite stationary. Does this display of obedient attention reflect a certain reverence for the legendary musician? I feel that bobbing heads and dancing feet would better serve the cult of Cale—at least during the more upbeat tunes. On the other hand, there are undoubtedly moments for motionless enchantment; in Half Past France the expanses of soft blue and orange sound over which the guitar rhapsodizes, raga-like, recall the meditative realm of minimalists La Monte Young and Tony Conrad, Cale’s old-time collaborators. I’m losing myself in the resonance…such is also my feeling as we conclude the set with grand, fortissimo chords and Cale singing the somewhat ironic words, “sleep…sleep…sleep, Hedda Gabler.”

* * *

At the end of the night a few orchestra members posed for a quick photo with Mr. Cale. During this brief encounter I introduced myself to Mr. Cale, though I regret not having made a proposition to him, and so I’ll inscribe my plea here:

Dear Mr. Cale,

Please take me on tour.

Sincerely,

Joshua Addison

Some student comments about the John Cale concert were:

“It was an amazing experience playing with one of the most established rock musicians of our time. The featured guests were on fire and it was great to meet and hang out with them. I hope to do some more stuff like this in the future.”

– Goni Eshed, MM Music Performance, Trumpet.

“I played at the John Cale’s concert which was an amazing experience that I would definitely never forget.”

–Boryana Popova, final year doctorate student in violin performance.

“On July 24, 2010 at Mannes College in New York, I was honored to participate in a daylong centennial tribute to Leonard Shure (1910-1995), a magnificent American pianist and one of my formative teachers. The symposium included sessions about Shure’s recordings, showings of master class videos, a roundtable discussion and an evening concert performed by several of his students. Along with conductor and former Shure student Hugh Wolff, I gave a pre-concert lecture about Shure’s life and legacy, and performed at the evening concert:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/arts/music/27keyboard.html

Leonard Shure was born in Los Angeles in 1910, grew up in Chicago and headed off to Berlin as a teenager in 1924 to study with Artur Schnabel. He eventually served as Schnabel’s assistant for six years. In 1933, Shure returned to the U.S. and began a meteoric rise as a performer that crested in the late 1940s. In a long and distinguished teaching career, including faculty positions at Mannes College, Boston University, Cleveland Institute of Music, New England Conservatory, the Aspen Music Festival and the University of Texas, Shure taught generations of prominent pianists and musicians including Ursula Oppens, Jerome Rose, Hugh Wolff, Anthony Tommasini, Phillip Moll, Victor Rosenbaum, Beth Levin, David Del Tredici, Gilbert Kalish, Paul Hirsch, John Browning, Virginia Eskin, Lawrence Leighton Smith, John Wustman, James Levine and Lynn Harrell. I studied piano privately with him from 1971 to 1976 in Boston, and he was an enormous influence on me musically.

Preparing the lecture gave me a chance to reflect on some of the values that I picked up from this remarkable musician, and seeing the videos brought back to all of us — with astonishing immediacy — the power of his playing and approach. His playing at lessons was headlong, visceral, utterly committed — even sometimes unhinged — with a gigantic range of sound and vividness of gesture. Beyond this, though, you had the sense that, as Lloyd Schwartz put it in his June 1986 Atlantic magazine profile of Shure, “he leaves one convinced that there are no alternatives.” From a rhetorical standpoint, his performances were simply colossally convincing.

All of us were so lucky to have encountered a musician of Shure’s stature. It was wonderful to share our memories of these great experiences with each other at this event.

If anyone is interested in learning more about this great musician, you can visit www.leonardshure.com where you can find recordings, tributes and an extensive biography.”

“I’m a sixth year in the Musicology department, finishing up my dissertation (Susan McClary is my chair) and applying for jobs this year. This summer I got a CEES grant to spend a month in Paris doing archival research at several departments of the Bibliothèque Nationale in support of my dissertation, which is on Berlioz and the “fantastic” authors of 19th century France (Gautier and Nodier, primarily).

In July I’m also playing at a 3-day music festival in Anacortes, Washington, with my band (”Lloyd and Michael”). I also just found out that my article on Symphonie Fantastique is being published in the journal 19th-century Music in early 2011, and I’ll be presenting a section of it at the AMS conference in Indianapolis this fall. I’m excited and nervous about all of these things!”

Congratulations, Marianna–it sounds like you’re going to have a great summer!

Steeped in folk music from birth, she was the youngest child of John A. Lomax and Bess Bauman Brown. Born Jan. 21, 1921, in Austin, Texas, she was home-schooled by her mother, who also taught her to play piano. Her father and her brother, Alan Lomax, collected seminal field recordings of traditional songs that had been sung by cowboys, prisoners and slaves. After her mother died in 1931, the family moved to Washington, D.C., and Hawes assisted her father’s pioneering research compiling the folk song archive at the Library of Congress.

In 1952 Bess and her husband, an artist, moved to California and settled with their children in Topanga Canyon, immersing themselves in the bohemian community anchored by actor Will Geer. Besides performing in coffeehouses and at music festivals, Hawes taught guitar, banjo, mandolin and folk singing through UCLA Extension courses, at the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program and, starting in 1963, at San Fernando Valley State College. Bess taught at Idyllwild Arts from 1958 through the mid 1960s.