Viola-Matic!

Things have been getting pretty heavy around here lately (it's the winter doldrums - I swear I'll stop going off on rants once the sun comes out,) so it's definitely time for a mental health break. This oughta be just the ticket - it's a crazy dweebish video that's been making the rounds of the music world this past week, and it stars, as all great dweebish music-related videos should, the viola...



Okay, quick explanation for those of you who haven't played a stringed instrument for a while, or ever. As you are no doubt aware, our instruments are traditionally made out of wood, and we make an absolutely absurd deal about what kind of wood it is, and how it was harvested, and whether it ever spent several decades floating in the Mediterranean Sea, and on and on. (Personally, my viola's made out of a Canadian barn that came crashing down a few decades back, and I've decided that this is way cool.)

But a while back, this fabulous light-weight-but-indestructible substance called carbon fiber was invented, and wouldn't you know, someone came up with the idea to start making stringed instruments out of it. It was a brilliant idea - not that carbon fiber violins sound anywhere near as good as a quality wood version, because they don't. But professional musicians frequently have to play a lot of gigs in what you might call less than ideal climatological conditions. Outdoor weddings, Fourth of July concerts - these are not necessarily the places you want to be toting your 1678 Amati. (Please don't write a snooty comment telling me that Amati wasn't making violins in 1678. I don't care and I couldn't be bothered to check. He's old and Italian, and old Italians were making great violins in 1678.)

So carbon fiber violins, violas, and cellos started to pop up in the hands of various gigging musicians, as a sort of backup to their main instruments. (Did I mention that carbon fiber is cheap?) I've never considered getting one myself, just because, well - did I mention that my viola is made out of a barn? I just assume it considers the outdoors to be its natural habitat. But they do seem to be a positive development in the lives of musicians whose primary instruments cost more than their homes. And if they can slice... er, dice... um, mash the living hell out of a tomato too, well then, bonus, right?

Wine, Music & Snobbery

If you live in the Twin Cities, and have any interest at all in good food and the restaurants that serve it, you probably don't need me to tell you who Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl is, or that she has a new book out which purports to make sense of the oh-so-highfalutin' world of wine. She's been all over the local airwaves in the days since the book hit stores, which has been an interesting thing to see and hear, since it turns out that she speaks very differently than she writes. (Isn't it always interesting when that's the case? Because I think that most of us tend to write in much the same style that we speak in. I certainly do.)

Anyway, I bring Dara up because she's also a blogger, and she had an interesting post up shortly after her media blitz began, mentioning that not everyone seemed to be happy with her take on wine and how to buy/rate/enjoy it. She didn't really mince any words in response:

"One of my greatest anxieties in writing my book was that I’d be a magnet for what I think of as the Gotcha-Squad of Wine Weenies. Who are wine weenies? They’re those baseball-stat-nerd-like people intent on making wine as confusing and elite as possible, because it makes them feel good...

"I feel I should just get this out on the table: Look Wine Weenies, you and I are not going to be friends. You want to be right, and I want to help the people you went to high school with have less stress in their lives when they bring wine to your house. The battle is on!"

Now, that's all somewhat tongue in cheek, of course, but it did get me thinking about the way I tend to react on the occasion that Sarah and I hear from someone who attended an Inside the Classics concert and came away positively outraged by everything they saw and heard. These aren't people who disliked one element of the show, or who thought I talked too fast, or that Sarah's theory explanations were boring, and just wanted to let us know since we asked for feedback. They aren't even people who attended a show, decided it just wasn't their thing and shot us a note saying so.

No, these are people just barely containing a boiling cauldron of rage brought on by our concert format, people who believe that on the rare occasion that anyone must speak from the stage at an orchestra concert, that speech must be couched in the gravest possible language, imply nothing but the utmost respect for every note on every page of every piece on the program, and generally impart to the audience just how serious and important classical music is.

We hear from at least one of these people after nearly every ItC concert we do. Usually, they're Orchestra Hall regulars who have been coming to traditional concerts forever, have never heard of Inside the Classics, and bought the ticket accidentally because they like the piece we were featuring and didn't bother to read anything else in the brochure/ad they were looking at. And the way I've always reacted up to this point has been to be as apologetic as possible for having wasted the person's evening, to acknowledge the obvious truth that ItC shows aren't for everyone, and if necessary, to point out how few of them we do in a given season compared with all the concerts in which neither Sarah nor I says a word.

But Dara's got me thinking. Maybe what we really need isn't apologies, but pushback. We could start handing out manifestos in the lobby before every ItC concert that begin, "Look, Concert Weenies, you and we aren't going to be friends..."

Eh, maybe not. Our PR staff probably wouldn't be big fans of that approach. But the irony in both the complaints we get and the flak Dara's taking over her tear-down-the-ivory-wine-cellar approach to grape juice is that the supposed offenders are actually big fans of the traditions they're accused of sullying. Sarah and I both love traditional orchestra concerts. Dara loves great wine. What we don't love is the idea that, if you haven't spent half your life reading extensive treatises on music or wine, you aren't worthy or capable of truly appreciating the experience.

I'm actually one of those baseball stat nerds that Dara mentioned. I toss around terms like OPS, VORP, and Win Share like they mean something (which they do, actually) and I get very exercised whenever I hear a broadcaster refer to Nick Punto as "scrappy," which is stat-geek for "not very good at baseball." This is how I choose to enjoy the National Pasttime. I get a lot out of it, and objectively, my obsession with the numbers means that I probably know more about the analytics of the game than most other people at the ballpark. But it would never occur to me to think that this somehow makes me a better baseball fan than the guy who's just trying to enjoy a day game with his kid and thinks Nick Punto sets a terrific example by always giving 100%.

Basically, there's nothing wrong with being an expert until you start looking down on everyone who isn't and assuming that the only reason they're not is because they're too dumb to think up to your level. And it's a shame how many people still want to put classical music (and wine) up on that pedestal...

Anna Russell 23, Pedestals 0

Passion Play

I read an interesting post on a local blog written by some of Minnesota's best professional chefs this past week, in which baker Solveig Tofte (of the justly famous Turtle Bread Co. in southwest Minneapolis) inveighed against people whose supposed "passion" for something (food, for instance) is belied by their lack of willingness to actually put in the work necessary to make a career of it...

"Passionate people tend have a romantic idea about what it means to be a baker, and we all know how long romance lasts. So these guys work for a week or two, and then I get to work at midnight and they’re in their car crying because nothing is as they thought it would be... Or they take all day making one baguette, cut it open to analyze the crumb structure and want accolades for doing such a great job."

I imagine that Tofte's post struck some readers as cynical and mean-spirited - after all, isn't passion exactly what's supposed to drive creative types? Don't we want our chefs (and actors, and musicians, and athletes) to be passionate about their work? Why would you try to discourage people with passion from making the object of their enthusiasm their life's work?

The world is full of people who are absolutely, devotedly passionate about everything from baseball to Beethoven, which is why people are willing to shell out their hard-earned money to watch Joe Mauer hit or the Minnesota Orchestra play a symphony. Those of us who perform for a living, whether on a stage, on a field, or in a kitchen, quite simply wouldn't have careers were it not for the existence of such people, and none of us should ever lose sight of that fact for a moment.

But on balance, I tend to agree with Tofte's sentiment. When I look back at the people I went to music school with, and I assess which of us were the most vocally passionate about music, I can't deny that those tended to be the people who didn't end up making it in the professional music world, at least as performers. Like Tofte's wannabe bakers, they romanticized the idea of playing music for a living to such an extent that either a) they were unable to objectively assess whether they themselves were good enough to make it in a very tough business, or b) they found the mind-numbing drudgery of daily practice and the complicated politics that permeate the musical workplace antithetical to their notion of what the life of a musician should be. Disillusionment is the enemy of the passionate, because it robs them of of any sense that what they're doing with their life is worthwhile.

Meanwhile, those of us who took a more pragmatic view of our chosen career path (it's a very cool job, yes, but it's still a job, and you can't expect it to be great fun every single day) have tended to weather the storm better. Call it cynicism if you like, but the reality is that it is not in my job description to love the music I play. My job is to play the music that's put before me (most of which I have no hand in selecting) in such a way that it will cause the audience to love it.

Much of the time, of course, I do love the music I play, but would anyone find it acceptable for me to turn in a bored-sounding performance of a piece I happen to think is overrated or that I've played ten times before? Of course not. In other words, the job of an entertainer is not so much to be passionate as to inspire passion in others. And it's an important distinction, if a somewhat touchy subject...

More Japanese madness

Ever since I posted my "Vegetabulous" videos I occasionally receive YouTube links to further musical silliness, most often of the Japanese variety (and, oh, my friends, there is no shortage of it...).

My latest submission:



The crux of the drama being what kind of rice to choose with the "breakfast set" (white or "mixed" - with meat/veggies/flavoring mixed in). The side dishes sound "gorgeous"! But wait, there's a third option, rice with mushroom ("mattake gohan"), which sounds delicious, but there are only two servings. No problem, Mom and Daughter will share, so they can have both white and mushroom rice. But this makes Dad a little envious, what shall we do? Fate seals the decision; breakfast time is over, declare the servers, lunch will begin soon!

Who comes up with this stuff??

Happy Turducken Day!

Hope everyone is enjoying a holiday full of family, friends and feasting! My Thanksgiving table will be dominated by a turducken:



(File photo - mine's nowhere near done...)

For those who are scratching their heads, a turducken is, yes, a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. It's so wrong, but so delicious. And decadent! Although, for true, true decadence, check out this monstrosity which goes by another name but which I think should be called a "dodecaducken".

Vegetabulous II (or, perhaps more accurately, Fruitabulous)

As promised, another installment in my food/instrument/Japanese madness series.

The Sound Of One Ear Chewing

Sarah has written before about the unmistakable link between musicians and cooking, and this past Sunday, as I was scouring the wires for orchestra news to plug into ArtsJournal's weekend edition, I came across a piece from Paul Horsley, music critic of the Kansas City Star, which really attempts to get at the heart of the matter.

Horsley, I suspect, started out writing this article as one of those humanizing personality pieces in which the arts reporter shows his subject to be just a regular guy, no matter how formal he may look on stage in tux and tails. But in the course of writing about a dinner party among musicians of the Kansas City Symphony, he must have had his interest piqued enough to do some serious research into whether there might actually be a connection between the way our brains process music and food...

"Most musicians agree that their discipline often fosters a highly sophisticated sense of taste... Numerous members of the Kansas City Symphony are so passionate about cuisine, it’s like a second profession."

That's all well and good, and my anecdotal experience would suggest that it is probably true of most orchestra rosters these days. But Horsley's not content with the anecdotal...

"Sensory perception happens in the brain’s cortex, the gray covering of the brain, and each sense activates a different area. For hearing, those areas are on the sides of the brain. Taste and smell are more deeply planted... We do know, however, that eating is a multisensory activity, and thus it involves the orbitofrontal cortex, which responds to enjoyable sensations and works to produce in us our sense of enjoyment when we experience these."

Heavy stuff, and certainly more than I ever think about while spending a rather unreasonable percentage of my downtime baking homemade bread, curing my own Canadian bacon, perfecting pan sauces, and trying desperately to come up with a perfect summer soup that will wow even my brother, a professional cook in Oregon. But I love the idea that there may be more to my and my colleagues' obsession with food than simple gluttony. Who knows, maybe the next major cultural crossover won't be between disparate musical genres, but between the acts of listening and eating...

(Oh, wait. Aaron Kernis and the Italian futurists already took care of that, didn't they?)

Vegetabulous (or, how some people might have too much time on their hands), Part I

Hmmmmm, another odd food/music thing from the Japanese...

Bach stock

Bach-infused miso (soybean paste, the basis of that sushi restaurant favorite, miso soup). I kid you not. I'm not sure what else to say about this; I'll just let all of you ponder.

Foodstuff, part deux

Remember the Dudamel Dog menu I posted a few months back? Here is the 'dog itself, in its full glory. Check out the whole story here.

Prokofiev and profiteroles

A rare evening off tonight allowed me a foray to Broders' Pasta Bar for a tasty Sunday dinner. I went with my friend Steve Copes, concertmaster of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and admitted foodie. He's a great restaurant guide as well as a terrific cook - the kind who whips up homemade gnocchi, pressed herbed chicken and poached pears for a random weeknight meal, just because. We bumped into MN Orchestra violinists Dave Brubaker and Aaron Janse enjoying a leisurely meal. As they were leaving we compared our dishes and Aaron waxed poetic on the marvels of guanciale, which made me smile.

I've always wondered about the strong correlation between being a musician and being a foodie. Part of it comes, I'm convinced, from a musician's understanding of careful preparation yielding an aesthetically pleasing result; we appreciate the composition of beautiful ingredients under skillful hands into an artistic expression of flavor and aroma. It's a creativity that we grasp innately as something very close to our own work.

It's not surprising, then, that many musicians are also quite accomplished cooks. MN Orchestra bassist Dave Williamson is infamous for his "cooking parties", where he opens his home to dozens of colleagues to cook up a storm in his kitchen (often emptying his pantry in the process). In fact, many members of the bass section are excellent cooks - give acting principal bass Fora Baltacigil any ingredient and he'll come up with some toothsome concoction fragrant with spices and redolent of his native Turkey. Violinist Mike Sutton makes a mean Ethiopian wots, complete with injera. And Sam makes some of the best roast chicken ever (thanks for bringing me some that day, Sam!).

I read far more reviews for restaurants than I'll ever be able to actually go to, impatiently wait for new episodes of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and devour (pun intended!) books like Bill Buford's Heat. Maybe musicians' foodie tendencies come from our intense focus on our work, which is most often a long-term venture (the results of practice can take weeks to manifest) and our need to have a hobby that is visceral, where the results are immediate and gratifying. Or maybe it is simply the pleasure of sharing a table with our friends and colleagues, and the delight of good food, good drink and good company that often continues far into the night...