MEXICO CITY (June 29) - Scientists were fascinated by the ghostly find: a human skeleton buried in an Aztec temple with a clay, skull-shaped whistle in each bony hand.
But no one blew into the noisemakers for nearly 15 years. When someone finally did, the shrill, windy screech made the spine tingle.
Alexandre Meneghini, AP
Mechanical engineer Roberto Velazquez has dedicated his life to replicating the sounds of pre-Columbian humans by producing hundreds of replicas of whistles, flutes and other wind instruments found in the ruins of Mexico.
If death had a sound, this was it.
Roberto Velazquez believes the Aztecs played this mournful wail from the so-called Whistles of Death before they were sacrificed to the gods.
The 66-year-old mechanical engineer has devoted his career to recreating the sounds of his pre-Columbian ancestors, producing hundreds of replicas of whistles, flutes and wind instruments unearthed in Mexico's ruins.
For years, many archaeologists who uncovered ancient noisemakers dismissed them as toys. Museums relegated them to warehouses. But while most studies and exhibits of ancient cultures focus on how they looked, Velazquez said the noisemakers provide a rare glimpse into how they sounded.
"We've been looking at our ancient culture as if they were deaf and mute," he said. "But I think all of this is tied closely to what they did, how they thought."
Velazquez is part of a growing field of study that includes archaeologists, musicians and historians. Medical doctors are interested too, believing the Aztecs may have used sound to treat illnesses.
Noisemakers made of clay, turkey feathers, sugar cane, frog skins and other natural materials were an integral part of pre-Columbian life, found at nearly every Mayan site. The Aztecs sounded the low, foghorn hum of conch shells at the start of ceremonies and possibly during wars to communicate strategies. Hunters likely used animal-shaped ocarinas to produce throaty grunts that lured deer.
The modern-day archaeologists who came up with the term Whistles of Death believe they were meant to help the deceased journey into the underworld, while tribes are said to have emitted terrifying sounds to fend off enemies, much like high-tech crowd-control devices available today.
Experts also believe pre-Columbian tribes used some of the instruments to send the human brain into a dream state and treat certain illnesses. The ancient whistles could guide research into how rhythmic sounds alter heart rates and states of consciousness.
Among Velazquez's replicas are those that emit a strange cacophony so strong that their frequency nears the maximum range of human hearing.
Chronicles by Spanish priests from the 1500s described the Aztec and Mayan sounds as sad and doleful, although these may have been only what was played in their presence.
"My experience is that at least some pre-Hispanic sounds are more destructive than positive, others are highly trance-evocative," said Arnd Adje Both, an expert in pre-Hispanic music archaeology who was the first to blow the Whistles of Death found in the Aztec skeleton's hands. "Surely, sounds were used in all kind of cults, such as sacrificial ones, but also in healing ceremonies."
Sounds still play an important role in Mexican society. A cow bell announces the arrival of the garbage truck outside Mexico City homes. A trilling, tuneless flute heralds the knife sharpener's arrival. A whistle emitting cat meows says the lottery ticket seller is here.
But pre-Columbian instruments often end up in a warehouse, Velazquez said, "and I'm talking about museums around the world doing this, not just here
That's changing, said Tomas Barrientos, director of the archaeology department at Del Valle University of Guatemala.
"Ten years ago, nothing was known about this," he said. "But with the opening up of museum collections and people's private collections, it's an area of research that is growing in importance."
Velazquez meticulously researches each noisemaker before replicating it. He travels across Mexico to examine newly unearthed wind instruments, some dating back to 400 B.C. and shaped like animals or deities. He studies reliefs and scans 500-year-old Spanish chronicles.
But making replicas is only part of the work. Then he has to figure out how to play them. He'll blow into some holes and plug others, or press the instrument to his lips and flutter his tongue. Sometimes he puts the noisemaker inside his mouth and blows, fluctuating the air from his lungs.
He experimented with one frog-shaped whistle for a year before discovering its inner croak.
Renowned archaeologist Paul Healy, who made an important discovery of Mayan instruments in Belize in the 1980s, said many of the originals still work.
"A couple of these instruments we found were broken, which was great because we could actually see the construction of them, the actual technology of building a sound chamber out of paper-thin clay," he said.
Still, their exact sounds will likely remain a mystery.
"When you blow into them, you still can get notes from them, so you could figure out what the range was," Healy said. "But what we don't have is sheet music to give us a more accurate picture of what it sounded like."
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL
Ocean Grove's pipe organ, a Jersey Shore treasure, marks 100 years of sacred song
Monday, June 30, 2008
BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER
Star-Ledger Staff
A pipe organ is like a living creature; its bellows are "lungs" that breathe with each performance. If the Ocean Grove Great Auditorium organ -- one of the nation's largest -- were to celebrate its long life with a birthday cake this week, it would have to blow out 100 candles.
When the organ was inaugurated on July 3, 1908, an audience of 8,000 overflowed the hall for a performance by Mark Andrews, a British-born organist and composer who had settled in Montclair.
Every summer since, the instrument has thundered and whispered, accompanying singers in Christian services and stirring listeners in classical recitals.
On Thursday, Gordon Turk -- the resident Ocean Grove organist since 1974 -- will lead a centennial concert at the Great Auditorium that will echo the pomp, circumstance and poetry that has soaked season after season into the seaside hall's wooden frame.
The evening also will celebrate a bigger and better instrument, with last year's addition of a rear "echo" division of 950 pipes, bringing the total to 10,823.
Turk has worked hand in hand with organ curator John Shaw, who also began his tenure in 1974. The pair has led the instrument's restoration and expansion, an ambitious process that Turk called a "long crescendo."
If there's a ghost at the party, however, it will be that of the organ's builder, Robert Hope-Jones. An eccentric genius, he had designed the Worcester Cathedral organ in England, but came to America trailing controversy.
Many of Hope-Jones' innovations in organ design raised contention in his day, though many would become standard.
Depressed from business troubles and homosexual scandals, Hope-Jones committed suicide on the sixth anniversary of his Ocean Grove masterpiece.
His demise came at the end of a gas pipe in an upstate New York rooming house. An inventor to the end, he constructed an apparatus that burned off excess fumes to protect the neighbors.
A musical masterpiece
Page 2 of 3
Seven years earlier, however, Hope-Jones counted Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) among the investors in the Hope-Jones Organ Co., based in Elmira, N.Y.
The Ocean Grove organ cost $27,000 in 1908 (about $600,000 today). Hope-Jones donated half the amount in an agreement with the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association -- the Methodist group that founded the town in 1869 and had the Great Auditorium built in 1894 -- that let him use the organ as a demonstration instrument.
Hope-Jones always put more into his instruments than the customers were paying for, contributing to his lack of financial success. But he had the courage of his convictions. While building the Ocean Grove organ, he told the New York Times it was "of a remarkable construction" and brimming with "devices never before used," including revolutionary electronics. The materials entailed 40,000 feet of sugar-pine lumber, with the largest pipe 32 feet tall, made of lead and weighing 1,100 pounds.
The Ocean Grove organ was a hit from the start. The first summer included performances by Edwin Lemare, a famed organist and composer. A convention of organists drew 200 players from around the country, and the organ was featured in a vast performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio "Elijah."
But not everyone residing near the Great Auditorium were enamored of the afternoon recitals. In 1909, a group complained to the Camp Meeting Association about how performances of "The Storm" fantasia "interrupted their naps."
In the middle of some nights, Hope-Jones himself could be heard in the auditorium trying out tones that haunted him in his dreams. Tinkering away from the keyboard, Hope-Jones sat on a stool in the bottom of the organ chamber. The stool remains there a century later .
'LIKE A BIG CELLO'
The sound that 100 years of listeners have heard in Ocean Grove is a mix of "the rich, spacious instrument and clear but warm acoustics, not as reverberant as a cathedral," Shaw said.
"Hope-Jones was smart. The building is a big part of the instrument. The auditorium, virtually all wood, is like a big cello, so he used the ceiling like a giant sounding board."
Shaw's role as curator is a volunteer position long balanced with a career in school facilities management. He can trace his ties to the organ back to Hope-Jones. When Shaw was a Pennsylvania teen summering in Ocean Grove in the early'50s, veteran curator Earl Beach, part of the original Hope-Jones Co. crew, gave him tours of the organ's "guts." And he remembers the sound hit him "viscerally, like rock'n' roll hit other boys."
Turk, 59, recalls auditioning nonchalantly for the resident organist position. Since then he has developed a bond with the instrument that belies the fact that this is a summer job. The Ocean Grove hall is neither air-conditioned nor heated, and the organ's leather bellows must stay closed in the cold.
A musical masterpiece
Page 3 of 3
One of Turk's joys are the listeners. Not just "the pipe-organ cognoscenti," he said, "but also the visitors who don't have a clue. I love being able to show them that organ music isn't limited to bad church music or old scary movies. Hearing Bach on a great instrument in the right acoustic can be an overwhelming experience. When listeners tell me how surprised they were at it being so thrilling, well, that's why I'm still here."
There are weekly Ocean Grove organ recitals in July and August, with Turk sharing the bench with organists from across the United States and Europe. Among the most frequent guests has been Michael Stairs, organist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He agrees with Turk that this organ's most uncommon quality is its versatility.
"Ocean Grove's organ sounds wonderful in all kinds of solo music, as well as behind a 400-voice choir," said Stairs, who joins Turk and the Philadelphia Brass for Thursday's concert. "And the recent restorations have the original work in mind. I think Hope-Jones would give his blessing."
Refurbishments have come from donations, but the Camp Meeting Association spends $18,000 a year for maintenance, including a dozen two-man tuning sessions each summer. The organization's CEO, Scott Hoffmann, insists the instrument is "the heart and soul of the Great Auditorium."
The new "echo" gallery, which enables antiphonal and ethereal effects akin to surround sound, is the most extensive addition in the instrument's history, the $200,000 cost funded by an anonymous donor. There also has been serendipitous re-gifting. An organ enthusiast in North Jersey, directed by his wife to finally clear their garage, returned 55 original pipes given to him when they were pulled from the hall in the'60s.
"Much of the restoration we've done has been recovering from ill-advised alterations and Band-Aid jobs," Shaw said. "Those responsible at one time were less interested in historical character than in keeping costs low."
The organ also runs smoothly these days because Turk gets off the bench and down to the organ chambers, insisting that "knowing what's going on inside helps me know how to bring the music out."
Proof that Turk knows how to bring the organ to life can be heard on an album of "French spectaculars" made for the Dorian label in 1998. He plans a new series of recordings this fall. What has him most excited, though, is a July 31 concert of organ concertos by Poulenc and Guilmant. In 34 years, he has played the organ with an orchestra only a few times.
The Great Auditorium seats 6,700; when recitals draw 300 to 500, the hall can look empty. But, Turk said, that is far more people than attend organ recitals in a church. And attendance is increasing.
"Listeners are recognizing that we have a rare treasure here.
"It's true that a pipe organ is as individual as a person," Turk added. "Unlike, say, a piano, organs come in myriad sizes and builds, and they each have their own sonic personality. We have formed a relationship here with this organ as if it were a living thing."
Bradley Bambarger may be reached at bbambarger@starledger.com.
KENYAN musician and pastor, Njoroge Wanjigi, has recorded an album dedicated to how much Zimbabweans are suffering under Zanu PF rule.
Wanjigi, a born-again Christian, said from South Africa he had come up with an album called Prayer of Zimbabwe in Shona and Ndebele.
He said he grasped the languages from "friends from Zimbabwe".
Cry for Zimbabwe, the only song Standardplus listened to through an attached MP3 file, was inspired by the political violence and persecution Wanjigi saw during his own country's post-election scenes early this year.
He said the song was influenced by his interaction with Zimbabweans living in SA, listening to talk radio and watching TV footage of scenes of violence in Zimbabwe.
He said: "My anger was particularly acute when I saw South African President Thabo Mbeki proclaim to the world there was no crisis in Zimbabwe."
"As the world waited for the release of electoral results weeks later," he said, "I was Godly-inspired to give the voiceless men, women and children of Zimbabwe a voice. I felt their pain, anger, suffering and more importantly, their will was being grossly misrepresented by such reckless eloquence. To add insult to injury, Robert Mugabe's total dismissal of their desire for change did not make it any better."
Twenty percent of the total sales of the album have been ear-marked for humanitarian aid for the struggling people of Zimbabwe
"I hope this song pulls at the heartstrings of the people of the world and unites us to mobilize humanitarian aid for the people of Zimbabwe,as opposed to shiploads of arms sanctioned by a demented government, a government committed to self-preservation at the expense of the starving people of Zimbabwe."
The album is now available in South Africa but is yet to reach Zimbabwe.
Kenyan musician, Njoroge Wanjigi has recorded an album that he dedicates to the suffering Zimbabwean community under the rule of 84 year old octogenarian Robert Mugabe. On the project, he expresses his sympathy with a song titled 'Cry for Zimbabwe', a Godly inspired song placed in the heart of Njoroge Wanjigi a born again Christian after experiencing what apathy can do.
Njoroge Wanjigi says he was influenced by various interactions with the Zimbabwean people living in SA, listening to talk radio and watching on TV the shenanigans taking place across the border. His anger was particularly acute when he saw his Excellency President Mbeki proclaim to the world that there is no crisis in Zimbabwe.
He comments; "As the world waited for the release of electoral results weeks later, I was Godly inspired to give the voiceless men, women and children of Zimbabwe a voice. I felt their pain, anger, suffering and importantly, their will was being grossly misrepresented By such reckless eloquence; to add salt to injury, Robert Mugabe’s total dismissal of their desire for change did not make it any better."
Cry for Zimbabwe was recorded in both shona and Ndebele. Twenty percent of the total sales of the album have been ear marked for humanitarian aid for the struggling people of Zimbabwe
"I hope that this song pulls on the heartstrings of the people of the world and unite us to mobilize humanitarian aid to the people of Zimbabwe as opposed to shiploads of armoury sanctioned by a demented government, a government committed to self-preservation at the expense of the starving people of Zimbabwe” he added
Famed Ernestine Anderson Jazz Vocalist Faces Foreclosure
By MANUEL VALDES,
AP
Posted: 2008-06-25 12:33:00
SEATTLE (June 25) - Jazz vocalist Ernestine Anderson is facing foreclosure on her home in Seattle in yet another sign that the mortgage loan crisis is hitting traditional working-class neighborhoods hard.
Big Names Hit by Foreclosures
Jonathan Ferrey, Getty Images
Ernestine Anderson The jazz vocalist sings the National Anthem at a Seattle Seahawks game. But Jackson may not be singing now as she faces a foreclosure on her Seattle home. Public records show that she is more than $30,000 in arrears in payments and penalties.
Anderson, who once sang with the likes of Quincy Jones and Ray Charles, is more than $30,000 in arrears in payments and penalties, public records show.
Friends and family have started a last-ditch effort to save her Central District home by pleading for donations. They hope to raise $45,000 for the 79-year-old in less than a week to cover the back payments and taxes, said Carmen Gayton, a friend of Anderson's family.
After that, Gayton said, they hope to buy enough time to figure out a way for Anderson to sustain herself.
James Kelly, president of the Urban League of Seattle, said counselors will try to find out how Anderson got a loan that now asks for a monthly payments of $5,000. Gayton said Anderson's monthly income is $1,000 from Social Security, and at her age, her performances are limited.
"She never should have gotten that loan," Gayton said. "It's a difficult issue for her. The house is her mom's and father's home, since 1946."
Public records show a principal balance of more than $450,000 on the house. Details of the loan were not immediately clear.
The home is slated for public auction July 11.
"Since 1946, I have been going out on the road, but this is home base," Anderson told KING5 television in Seattle. "I can't tell you how wonderful people have been to me. People I don't know."
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Associated Press efforts to reach Anderson by phone Tuesday were not successful.
After 30albums and four Grammy nominations, Anderson is one of Seattle's most respected names in music, part of a jazz scene the flourished in the city well before grunge and alternative rock took the stage.
Anderson is one of dozens of people facing foreclosure in her neighborhood, an area of Seattle that has been traditionally African American. More than 200 houses face foreclosure in Anderson's zip code, according to Realty Trac, a Web site that tracks foreclosures.
Seattle Jazz Icon Facing Foreclosure
POSTED: 3:15 pm PDT June 24, 2008
UPDATED: 8:23 am PDT June 25, 2008
SEATTLE, Wash. -- A local organization is heading up a fundraising effort to help Seattle jazz icon and four-time Grammy nominee Ernestine Anderson avoid the foreclosure of her family home, reported KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.
Anderson's family has lived in their home in the Central District since 1946 and has until June 30 to raise at least $45,000 or the home will be put up for auction on July 11.
"My whole family was in this house, you know -- my mother, my father, my sister and my children," Anderson said in an interview with KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Essex Porter.
Anderson said she hasn't been able to keep up with the mortgage payments of $5,000 a month.
Family and friends sounded the alarm last week, and donations are beginning to come in.
"It's just been wonderful, it's been an eye-opener, you know, and it restores your belief in people," she said.
The Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, which is helping hundreds of families with foreclosure issues, said an account has been set up for Anderson at Bank Of America, where a donation can be made at any branch under The Ernestine Anderson Fund.
"We have a long, rich history of helping families out regardless of their race. But in this case, Miss Anderson is special; she is a living legend, she is a four-time Grammy nominee and not only that, she is an elderly individual, and to us, we need to make sure that we continue to reach out," said league president and CEO James Kelly.
Born in Texas, the 79-year-old jazz legend has recorded more than 30 albums and is still performing. She moved with her family to Seattle in 1944 when she was 16 years old and graduated from Seattle's Garfield High School.
Ernestine Anderson (born November 11, 1928) is an American jazz and blues singer. In a career spanning more than five decades, has recorded over 30 albums. In the early 1990s she joined Qwest Records, the label of fellow Garfield High School grad Quincy Jones. She was nominated four times for a Grammy Award. She has sung at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center,[1] the Monterey Jazz Festival (six times over a 33-year span), as well as at jazz festivals all over the world.
Contents[hide]
1Biography
2Selected discography
3Grammy history
4Recognitions
5Footnotes
6External links
[edit]Biography
Anderson was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of a construction worker. At age three, she could sing along with the raw tunes of the legendary Bessie Smith -- she soon moved on to the more refined environs of her local church, singing solos in its gospel choir.
Anderson tells of her early life in the book, The Jazz Scene (1998):
"My parents used to play blues records all the time," Ernestine Anderson told me. "John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, all the blues greats. In Houston, where I grew up, you turned on the radio and what you got was country and western and gospel. I don't even remember what my first experience with music was. I sort of grew into it. My father sang in a gospel quartet and I used to follow him around, and both my grandparents sang in the Baptist church choir. And they had big bands coming through Houston like Jimmie Lunceford, Billy Eckstine, Erskine Hawkins, and Count Basie." Ernestine's godmother entered her in a local talent contest when she was twelve years old. "I only knew two songs," she admitted, On the Sunny Side of the Street and So Long. The piano player asked me what key did I do these songs in and I just said "C" for some reason and it was the wrong key. In order to save face I sang around the melody, improvised among the melody, and when I finished one of the musicians told me I was a jazz singer."[2]
Her family moved to Seattle, Washington in 1944, when she was sixteen. Anderson graduated from Garfield High School. When she was eighteen, she left Seattle, to tour for a year with the Johnny Otis band. In 1952, she went on tour with Lionel Hampton's orchestra. After a year with the legendary band, she settled in New York, determined to make her way as a singer. Her appearance on Gigi Gryce's 1955 album Nica's Tempo (Savoy)[3] led to a partnership with trumpeter Rolf Ericson for a three-month Scandinavian tour. Ernestine's first album in the United States was made after her debut album, recorded in Sweden and released here by Mercury Records under the title Hot Cargo (1958), which created a huge sensation. In 1959 Anderson won the Down Beat "New Star" Award and recorded for Mercury to more acclaim, before dividing her time from the mid-60's between America and Europe.
"I don't think jazz ever died. It suffered a setback during the sixties. I had to move to London in order to work because a jazz person couldn't work in the United States when rock 'n' roll became the music. I didn't think it would last this long, and I don't think the rock 'n' roll people thought it would last this long, but it had."[4]
Her re-emergence in the mid-1970's (at which time Ray Brown was her manager) came as a result of a sensational appearance at the 1976 Concord Jazz Festival, a string of albums for Concord Records followed. Anderson has continued her career revival into the 1990s, working with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, amongst others.[5]
[edit]Selected discography
1958: The Toast of the Nation's Critics - (Mercury Records)
1963: The New Sound of Ernestine Anderson Collectable Jazz Classic - (Sue Records)
1977: Hello Like Before - (Concord Records)
1978: Live From Concord To London - (Concord Records)
1980: Sunshine - (Concord Records)
1981: Never Make Your Move Too Soon - (Concord Records)
1983: Big City - (Concord Records)
1985: When the Sun Goes Down - (Concord Records)
1987: Live at the Alley Cat: With the Frank Capp/Nat Pierce Juggernaut - (Bellaphon Records)
1987: Be Mine Tonight - (Concord Records)
1988: A Perfect Match With George Shearing - (Concord Records)
1990: Boogie Down - (Concord Records)
1990: Live at the 1990 Concord Jazz Festival Third Set - (Concord Records)
1991: Boogie Down With the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra - (Concord Records)
1993: Great Moments With Ernestine Anderson - (Concord Records)
1994: Now and Then - (Qwest Records)
1996: Blues, Dues & Love News - (Qwest Records)
1998: Isn't It Romantic - (Koch International Records)
2000: Ballad Essentials - (Concord Records)
2002: I Love Being Here With You - (Concord Records)
2002: Free Soul: The Classic of Ernestine Anderson - (Jvc Japan Records)
2003: Love Makes the Changes - (High Note Records)
Sacred Songs Sell, Drawing Attention to Their Source
Ernst Weiss/European Pressphoto Agency
Some monks posing with copies of their album. By MARK LANDLER
Published: June 26, 2008
HEILIGENKREUZ, Austria — As noon draws near, the monks glide into the church, their white cowls billowing behind them. They line up in silence, facing each other in long choir stalls. Wood carvings of saints peer down on them from the austere Romanesque nave.
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Herwig Prammer/Reuters
Monks sang evening vespers last month at Heiligenkreuz Abbey.
The monks at Heiligenkreuz Abbey put their work online.
Bells peal and the chant begins — low at first, then swelling as all the monks join in. Their soft voices wash over the ancient stones, replacing the empty clatter of the day with something like the sound of eternity.
Except, that is, for the clicks of a camera held by a photographer lurking behind a stone pillar.
It has been like this since last spring, when word got out that the Cistercian monks of the Stift Heiligenkreuz, deep in the Vienna woods, had been signed by Universal Music to record an album of Gregorian chants.
When the album, “Chant: Music for Paradise,” was released in Europe in May — and shot to No. 7 in the British pop charts, at one point outselling releases from Amy Winehouse and Madonna — the trickle of press attention turned into a torrent. (The CD will be released in the United States on Tuesday.)
Now this monastery, where the daily rituals of prayer and work have guided life for 875 years, finds itself in a media whirligig at once exhilarating and unsettling for its 77 brothers.
“We’re monks,” said Johannes Paul Chavanne, 25, a Viennese who entered the monastery after studying law and is training to be a priest. “We’re not pop stars, and we don’t want to be pop stars.”
Too late: the album has made the monks of Heiligenkreuz a crossover hit, the latest example of how Gregorian chant, a once-neglected 1,000-year-old part of the Roman Catholic liturgy, can be repackaged for a secular society that savors its soothing, otherworldly cadences.
Heiligenkreuz — the name means Holy Cross — has put one of its more worldly monks, Karl Wallner, in charge of public relations. When not in prayer, he spends his days fielding calls from reporters as far away as New Zealand. His cellphone, its ring tone set to chant, sings constantly.
“I’m like a shield around my community,” said Father Wallner, who has been a monk for 26 years. “There was a lot of concern at first that this would destroy the serenity of the monastery.”
Some monks also worried that putting chants, which are, after all, prayers, into a commercial product amounted to a kind of profanity — “like using Leonardo da Vinci as wallpaper,” in the words of one. For most, those risks are outweighed by what they believe is the music’s great potential: to stir feelings of faith in a society that has drifted far from religion.
Still, the making of these latest monastic stars may say more about the way the secular world, thanks to the power of the Internet, can penetrate even the most secluded of cloisters.
In 1994, the Benedictines of Santo Domingo de Solis in Spain prompted the last big revival of Gregorian chant with an album that became a phenomenon. More recently, the use of chant on the popular video game Halo has piqued interest.
Eager to get in on the trend, Universal’s classical music label took out an advertisement in Catholic publications, inviting chant groups to submit their work. Finding another ensemble like the Benedictines was going to be a long shot, the label’s executives figured.
“Not all monks want to enter into a commercial relationship because that’s not what they spend their days doing,” said Tom Lewis, the artist development manager in London for Universal Classics & Jazz.
But the advertisement was spotted by the grandson of a monk from here. He tipped off Father Wallner, who, in addition to his public-relations duties, runs the monastery’s theological academy and its Web site.
“An Austrian monk would never know what Universal Music is,” Father Wallner said. “We were chosen by divine providence to show that it is possible to have a healthy religious life today.”
Divine providence may have less to do with it than one monk’s resourcefulness. Father Wallner sent Mr. Lewis a short e-mail message with a link to a video of chants that the monks had uploaded to YouTube after Pope Benedict XVI visited the monastery last September.
While monks in many monasteries chant, Heiligenkreuz is particularly proud of its singing, which has been honed over years by one of the monks, who used to direct choirs in Germany.
Mr. Lewis was entranced, recalling that the video eclipsed the more than 100 other submissions. “There was a smoothness and softness to the voices that you associate with younger people,” he said.
Universal negotiated a contract with the monks, who proved to be anything but naïve in the ways of business. It helped that the abbot, Gregor Henckel Donnersmark, has an M.B.A. and ran the Spanish outpost of a German shipping company before he entered the monastery in 1977.
Among the clauses he sought: Universal cannot use the chanting in video games or pop music. The monks will never tour or perform on stage. And Heiligenkreuz will earn a royalty based on the sales of the album, which the abbot said worked out to roughly 1 euro per CD sold.
The monastery’s share, Father Henckel Donnersmark figures optimistically, could be between $1.5 million and $3.1 million, which it will use to help finance the theological studies of young men from developing countries. So far, Universal has sold nearly 200,000 copies.
“Money is not a source of fulfillment,” the abbot said, though he pointed out that it would defray the monastery’s expenses, which are high, partly because of its success in attracting novices.
Even before the album, these monks had encountered the world of show business. The abbot’s nephew, Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, wrote the screenplay for “The Lives of Others,” an Academy Award-winning film about East Germany, while holed up in a monk’s cell at Heiligenkreuz. He brought his Oscar back to the monastery, where the monks took turns holding it.
“A place like that can recalibrate your moral compass,” Mr. Henckel von Donnersmark said by telephone from Los Angeles. “These people do nothing but think about how to love and serve God.”
For now, the monks seem sanguine that they can balance this solitary vocation with the glare of celebrity.
“If the problem becomes too big,” the abbot said, “I’ll take a plane down to Santo Domingo de Silos and ask the abbot there for advice.”
Ira Tucker, Gospel Singer Who Gave Dixie Hummingbirds Emotive Edge, Dies at 83
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: June 26, 2008
Ira Tucker, a little man with a giant vocal range and acrobatic stage antics who as lead singer of the Dixie Hummingbirds helped propel gospel music toward a harder-edged, more emotive style, died on Tuesday in Philadelphia. He was 83.
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Jack Vartoogian
Ira Tucker, far left, joined the Dixie Hummingbirds as a teenager. The group performed at Symphony Space in 1995, above, with Carl Davis, second from left, Paul Owens and Howard Carroll.
The cause was heart failure, his son, Ira Jr., said, adding that he had earlier suffered two major heart attacks.
According to publicity material from 1950, Mr. Tucker joined what became one of the longest-lasting groups in gospel music when he was 14. Other sources say he joined in 1938 at 13. In any case, he never left.
At its peak in the 1940s and ’50s, the group was one of gospel’s most popular and innovative, using shouting lead parts and walking basslines in songs like “Thank You for One More Day,” “Trouble in My Way” and “Bedside of a Neighbor.” The back-and-forth singingof Mr. Tucker and another tenor, James Walker, is legendary.
In the 1970s the Hummingbirds attained a new and different sort of popularity when they backed up Paul Simon on his hit “Loves Me Like a Rock,” then recorded the same tune themselves and won a Grammy.
Mr. Tucker was a tenor when he started, moved on to baritone and sometimes eased into a rumbling bass. His scream, though, was his defining characteristic: it originated far back in this throat and issued forth at a high register in perfect pitch. He then returned to the baritone range without missing a beat or lyric.
Mr. Tucker added fire to the group’s performances. With a style borrowed from Southern preachers, he wailed, hollered and gesticulated in what today sounds like a precursor to James Brown.
It is hard to gauge how much influence one musician truly has on another, but many articles suggest that Mr. Tucker’s highly stylized singing may have inspired Jackie Wilson, Stevie Wonder, the Drifters, Hank Ballard and the Temptations.
Mr. Tucker had no doubt of his power to inspire. His son remembered him recently listening to a Sly Stone record and smiling broadly at an idiosyncratic inflection. “They heard my old records,” he said.
Anthony Heilbut, an author, producer and expert on gospel and other music, called Mr. Tucker “the presiding intelligence” of gospel music.
Jerry Zolten, an associate professor at Penn State Altoona and author of a book on the Hummingbirds, termed Mr. Tucker “one of the top echelon of gospel lead vocalists who inspired others to sing like him.”
Aside from Michael Jackson, few performers showed as much eagerness to emulate the way Mr. Tucker flung himself from the stage, ripped off his coat, ran down the aisles and finally wilted to his knees in prayer.
“I was blessed,” Mr. Tucker said in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune in 2004. “I never did hurt myself doing it.”
Ira B. Tucker was born on May 17, 1925, in Spartanburg, S.C., with a middle initial that stood for nothing. He sang at local tea parties, and at 13 or 14 he approached James Davis, who had started the group that became the Hummingbirds in Greenville, S.C., in 1928 when he was 12. Mr. Tucker told Mr. Davis that he would walk the 29 miles back to Spartanburg if he failed the audition.
“I’ve beenwith them ever since,” he said in an interview with The Independent Weekly of Durham, N.C. At the beginning he made $3 or $4 a week.
Mr. Heilbut disputed reports that Mr. Tucker made records in 1939. He said that the first performance in which Mr. Tucker could be heard as an individual came in 1944, on a record called “Book of the Seven Seals.” (The record labeled it “Seven Seas.”)
Calling Mr. Tucker’s singing suave and elegant, Mr. Heilbut marveled, “He’s about ready to be Billy Eckstine,” referring to the ballad singer and bandleader.
In 1942 the group was featured at the New York nightclub Cafe Society, where Lester Young, the saxophonist, was also playing. A decade later the group performed regularly at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Their appearance at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival was another high mark.
The Hummingbirds recorded most prolifically and successfully in the 1950s, for Peacock Records. Their Peacock songs included “Let’s Go Out to the Program” and “In the Morning.” In 2002 an album including several songs by the Hummingbirds, a compilation of gospel music by Thomas A. Dorsey and others, was the first gospel album to be placed on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.
In addition to his son, who lives in Deptford, N.J., Mr. Tucker is survived by his wife of 66 years, the former Louise Eleanor Archie; his sisters Sundray Tucker of Philadelphia, who sings and writes songs under the name Cindy Scott, and Lynda Laurence of Los Angeles, a post-Diana Ross member of the Supremes; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
The Dixie Hummingbirds are scheduled to perform at the Prospect Park Bandshell on Thursday night at 7:30 as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn! series. Mr. Tucker’s son said that they still planned to appear.
The Hummingbirds are known for a joyful sound that adds humor to gospel. Their hit “Christian Automobile” sounds like a car shifting gears and climbing a heavenly hill.
The day before he died, his son said, Mr. Tucker tried to sing and could not. So he said he was going to switch careers and become a comedian, and spent the rest of the day cracking jokes.
Philadelphia Gospel Legend, Ira Tucker, Dies at age 83
Submitted by DNA on Tue, 06/24/2008 - 9:45pm.
General News
Mr. Ira Tucker, lead singer of Philadelphia Famous Dixie Hummingbirds since 1938, died this morning at 10:10 AM. He recently celebrated his 83rd birthday. Mr. Tucker joined the Dixie Hummingbirds in 1938 in South Carolina. The group itself was formed in 1928. The group moved to Philadelphia in 1942 to do a program on WCAU. Mr. Tucker was on of the most prolific hard gospel singers in history. He influenced many gospel and secular performers such as The Temptations, Bobby Blue Bland, and Stevie Wonder to name a fraction.
Sonny Okosuns, a Nigerian singer and musician who achieved international stature by aiming his music — a catchy, rock-inflected cocktail of funk, reggae, Afrobeat and more — at human-rights abuses, died on May 24 in Washington. He was 61.
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Sonny Okosuns performing around 1984.
Nigerian government officials confirmed his death. Reports in Nigerian newspapers said the cause was colon cancer.
Mr. Okosuns added the final “s” to his surname in adulthood, Africa News reported. He was referred to by both names.
His boyhood inspirations were Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard and the Beatles, but at a time when Africans were still fighting for their freedom, he took the position that songs needed a message. His anthem protesting apartheid in South Africa, “Fire in Soweto” (1977), was probably his best-known song, and others strongly promoted African unity and black pride.
“Papa’s Land” (1977) took on South African abuses. “Holy Wars” (1978) addressed liberation movements throughout southern Africa.
“All my mates were singing love songs,” he once said, according to an obituary in The Independent, in London. “I was trying to talk about what was happening to black people.”
In a review of a live performance in The New York Times in 1988, Jon Pareles said Mr. Okosuns delivered his freedom songs “with a soul singer’s gritty urgency.”
Most of his 39 albums were made in Nigeria, but some were recorded in England, France and the United States. In the 1970s and 80s, he toured in the United States and did tours of Nigeria with the reggae star Jimmy Cliff and others.
Sunny Okosun was born on Jan. 1, 1947, in Benin City, Nigeria. He dropped out after elementary school. His parents were traditional musicians, but he taught himself the guitar.
In addition to foreign rock ’n’ roll, he was inspired by popular films. Vanguard, a Nigerian newspaper, reported that his first recognition came as an actor. He organized and played with several local bands before starting Paperback Ltd. in 1972. That group was soon renamed Ozziddi, which means “message.”
Mr. Okosuns popularized liberation music well ahead of any of his countrymen. But his message was not radical, like that of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, a dissident songwriter who directly challenged the government, Mr. Pareles wrote.
Musically, Mr. Okosuns combined Western funk and reggae with traditional melodies and rhythms. He said he believed that the elements from elsewhere were simply returning to Africa, where they had originated. The result was a zestful, funky strand in what has come to be called world music.
By the late 1980s, Mr. Okosuns found his popularity ebbing, but he reinvented himself as a gospel performer called Evangelist Sunny Okosuns. His 1994 album “Songs of Praise” sold almost a million copies, The Independent said.
After his death, Africa News reported on his complicated involvement with many women, at least two of whom he married — and these simultaneously.
The paper said that toward the end of his life, he took in many children to whom he was not related and ran his home “like a commune.” It said he gave his surname to many of the children but did not legally adopt them. His immediate survivors include four children.
Nigeria: Music Icon, Sonny Okosun, Dies At 61
Leadership (Abuja)
26 May 2008 Posted to the web 26 May 2008
Adesoji Oyinlola
Frontline musician, Evangelist Sonny Okosun, died on Saturday after a protracted illness that rendered him bedridden for months.
The "free Mandela" exponent gave up the ghost at the Howard University Hospital, Washington D.C., United States of America, after a futile search for a cure for cancer that made the once buoyant musician a shadow of his old self.
LEADERSHIP has it on good authority that the Ozzidi exponent, after a fruitless search for cure for the illness that rendered him incommunicado for months, had last month approached Pastor T.B. Joshua of the famous Synagogue Church of All Nations without positive results. Callers at the Ikotun, Egbe, church were stunned to see the Ozzidi king among the hordes of miracle seekers.
The late musician appeared desperate in his search for cure but was tacitly brushed aside by the big man in the synagogue.
Known for his fusion of western reggae and pop music stylings with Nigerian instrumentation and themes to create catchy tunes with wide appeal, Okosun (sometimes called "Sonny Okosuns") was born in Benin City, Edo State, in 1947.
He started his first band, the Postmen, in 1964, then served several years in the group of Victor Uwaifo before launching Paperback Ltd. (soon renamed Ozziddi) in 1972.
He sang in his native Edo language as well as Yoruba and English.
A music enthusiast, John Beadle, wrote on the website biochem.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp that Ozziddi's first few releases, with their catchy, rock-inflected melodies and topical lyrics, were all big hits in Nigeria, but 1977's "Fire in Soweto" really put Okosun on the map internationally.
Further attention came in the early '80s with the release of "Liberation," a "best-of" compilation on the American Shanachie label, and a number of international tours.
"Okosun's supposed 'controversial' lyrics in the 1970s and 1980s about South Africa and the plight of the Third World were actually not at all radical in the African context. In this regard it is interesting to compare Okosun's career with that of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, who faced genuine hardship as a result of his pointed attacks on the Nigerian elite," said Mr Beadle.
Another website, www.naijajams.com, describes Okosun as "one of the most recognisable names in Nigerian popular culture and music over the past 20-30 years."
Apart from the general appeal and catchiness of his tunes, Okosun addressed political and social issues in his tunes, said the site. "… Not on the direct, in-your-face, these-are-Nigerian-issues style of Fela Kuti, but more on a pan-African 'stop the wars, let's progress' tempo with tracks like Revolution, Now or Never, Fire in Soweto, etc.
"Another prominent theme is religion, namely Christianity, where he sings various praises to Oluwa. An example is in the 1983 release Sonny Okosun - Olorun Mose on the Togetherness 12... As with most of Okosun's music, the instrumentation on this track is almost entirely western, save for the talking drum in the very beginning."
Okosun's career faded in the late 1980s, but the singer roared back in 1994 with the smash gospel album "Songs of Praise," which won a number of Nigerian music awards. Since then, "Evangelist Sonny Okosuns" had ridden a wave of Christian evangelism in Nigeria to become the country's foremost gospel musician, with a growing fan base in other parts of the world.
Family members at the Yaya Abatan, Ogba home of the late musician told LEADERSHIP that Okosun started showing signs of illness about five years ago when close associates noticed his emaciating physique.
Described as a close confidant of former President Obasanjo, the musician, who became born again about 15 years ago, established the House of Prayer Church, situated in Aguda, Ogba.
He was famous for his prowess to discover star artistes, including "One Love" diva, Onyeka Onwenu, and samba crooner, Stella Monye, among others.
A spokesperson for the family who sought anonymity told LEADERSHIP that family members are putting heads together to fine-tune burial arrangements for the departed music icon.
RAMSEY LEWIS COMMISSIONED FOR "LINCOLN" PIECE: Jazz man asked to compose new work inspired by life of 16th president.
*Jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis and choreographer Bill T. Jones have been commissioned to create works inspired by the life of Abraham Lincoln as part of the Ravina Festival, a musical gathering to be held north of Chicago.
Lewis will contribute a musical composition, while Jones is to create a dance theater work as part of Ravina's seasonlong celebration of Lincoln, reports the Associated Press.
The 73-year-old Lewis, Ravinia's artistic director for jazz, said he was pleased that the Lincoln celebration will feature the works of two black people — Jones and himself.
"I think it's extraordinary that in this year when an African-American has a viable shot at the White House that Ravinia would bookend its Lincoln celebration with the works from the black perspective," he said in a statement.
Lewis also found it appropriate that Lincoln's story will be told through the "purely American music" of jazz.
Jazz great Ramsey Lewis to compose work about Lincoln
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. - Add a musical composition to all the tributes to next year's 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.
Jazz great Ramsey Lewis has been commissioned to compose a new work inspired by Lincoln's life. The work is being commissioned by the Ravinia Festival, a musical festival north of Chicago. Ravinia has already asked choreographer Bill T. Jones to create a full-evening dance theater work as part of the season-long celebration of Lincoln.
And in the news release announcing Lewis' new untitled work, Ravinia said that it will present a number of programs focusing on Lincoln's life and the musicians of his day.
Lewis, Ravinia's artistic director for jazz, said he was pleased that the celebration of Lincoln will begin with the works of two black people, he and Jones.
"I think it's extraordinary that in this year when an African American has a viable shot at the White House that Ravinia would bookend its Lincoln celebration with the works from the black perspective," he said in a statement.
Lewis also said it is appropriate that Lincoln's story should be told through the "purely American music" of jazz.
On June 23, 2008 there will be a benefit for the great jazz pianist Ronnie Mathews at Sweet Rhythm Jazz Club in NYC at 88 7th Avenue South. Doors open at 7:00 PM. Phone 212-255-3626.
Ronnie Mathews has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. His friends in the jazz world will be celebrating his life with music on this special evening.
Donations of $25 at the door will go directly to his family to cover medical expenses.
Musicians that will be playing are Jimmy Heath, Cedar Walton, David Williams, Randy Weston, Charles Davis, George Coleman, Sonny Fortune, Benny Powell, Frank Wess, Louis Hayes, Ray Bryant, Gary Bartz, Steve Turre, Akua Dixon, Victor Lewis, Bill Saxton, Don Sickler, John Lee, Claudio Roditi and the members of the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Big Band, Michael Weiss, Larry Riddley, Eric Reed, Donald Smith, Neil Smith, Duane Burno, Melba Joyce, Kathy Farmer, Lucy Galligher, Roni Ben-Hur and others still to be announced.
sweetrhythmny.com
Ronnie Mathews Official Myspace Page
One of the most prestigious pianists of the past 40 years and yet one of those essential contributors to thepuzzle of jazz history who has not received due recognition. It seems "Ronnie Mathews" would be more a household name than it is, for his lofty investment into jazz. According to the New York Daily News, "Ronnie Mathews (is) another stalwart figure who has yet to receive the proper recognition." His years of touring and his many albums, both as leader and sideman, are overwhelming in number. Critics have showered accolaides upon his name and affectionately compare him to fellow pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, with a sprinkle of McCoy Tyner. Not that Ronnie ever imitated them, but rather, that he is in league with these jazz greats.
In his twenties, Ronnie was already an accomplished player who toured internationally and recorded with the likes of Max Roach, Freddie Hubbard and Roy Haynes. He was also a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the late 1950's through the 60's. By thirty, he began teaching jazz piano and led workshops, clinics and masterclasses at Long Island University in New York City. Besides Dexter Gordon and Clark Terry, he toured and recorded on two Louis Hayes projects in the 70's (i.e. the Louis Hayes-Woody Shaw Quintet and the Louis Hayes-Junior Cook Quintet). Of the three Louis Hayes recordings that features Ronnie, his original compositions can be heard on "The Real Thing" (Muse).
One of the highlights of his career and longest associations, was with the Johnny Griffin Quartet. In Ronnie's own words, "This was a very, very special group." For almost five years (1978-1982) he was an integral part of Johnny Griffin's Quartet and forged lasting relationships with Johnny, Kenny Washington (drums) and Ray Drummond (bass). The New York Times describes Ronnie as "a constant and provocative challenge to Mr. Griffin...(he) is the energizer of the group..." Never getting enough of a good thing, Ronnie boasts of a possible reunion of the quartet sometime soon. One of the few Johnny Griffin recordings that features Ronnie's original compositions is "To the Ladies"(Galaxy).
In the 80's, Mathews began honing his role as a front man. He performed as a leader in duo, trio and quartet configurations around the world (from New York City to Genova, to the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland, and more). He also toured with Freddie Hubbard and Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Band. One sign of his broad scope of talent and musical amiability, is his position as pianist for the Tony Award winning Broadway musical, "Black and Blue" in 1989. And Broadway wasn't his only cross-media project; In 1990, Mathews was one of the artists who recorded on Spike Lee's movie, "Mo' Better Blues."
After a stint touring and recording with Clifford Jordan Big Band in the early 90's, Ronnie joined T.S. Monk, Jr. for eight years of touring and recording. Gleaming reviews of the T.S. Monk Band never failed to complement Mathews. Chicago Tribune considered Ronnie "the soul of the band... who's angular romanticism provides the horn players with a lush, spicy foundation..." Three CDs have been recorded with the T.S. Monk, Jr. Band. T.S. Monk's "Charm" is one recording that has Ronnie Mathews' offerings on it.
To date, Ronnie tours extensively both as a leader and sideman, and can be found at any one of the major festivals across the globe. Mathews is a well-seasoned composer and does master classes and clinics whenever the opportunity arises. He is looking forward to the 1999 publication of his book, "Easy Piano of Thelonious Monk", through Hal Leonard Books. This compilation of Ronnie Mathews' arrangements is Thelonious Monk tunes made easy, for students of the piano. He hopes to continue on an educational path by doing clinics in connection with the book. New recordings featuring Mathews sprout like spring blooms. A fresh new recording will be released in the coming months starring a talented quartet of musicians who all live on Sterling Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn. (Who can resist a project when Vincent Herring (sax), Carl Allen (drums), Richie Goods (bass) and Ronnie Mathews all live just doors away from each other?)
Aside from the string of solo recordingsdone with various labels over the years; Doin' the Thang (1963/Prestige), So Sorry Please (1985/Nilva), Selena's Dance (1988/Timeless), At Cafe des Copains (1989/Sackville), Dark Before the Dawn (1990/DIW), Lament for Love (1992/DIW), Shades of Monk (1995/Sound Hills), etc., Ronnie's playing and compositions can be enjoyed on countless recordings by other musicians; Roy Hargrove's "Family" (1995), Abbey Lincoln's "People In Me", and Antoine Roney's "Whirling", to name a few.
Ronnie Mathews is something like Clark Kent: a superhero in disguise! For all he's done, you may not know it was him. Hopefully the oncoming months will bring Ronnie into the spotlight, where the world will acknowledge all he's accomplished!
Ronnie Mathews (born December 2, 1935 in New York City) is a jazz pianist primarily known for working with other musicians. He worked with Max Roach from 1963 to 1968 and also worked with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He acted as lead in recording from 1963 and 1978 - 1979. His most recent work was in 2003.
[edit]Selected discography
Ronnie Mathews/Roland Alexander/Freddie Hubbard with Roland Alexander, Marcus Belgrave, Charles Davis, Albert "Tootie" Heath, Freddie Hubbard, Eddie Khan, Gene Taylor, 1961, 1963
Doin' hte Thang with Charles Davis, Albert "Tootie" Heath, Freddie Hubbard, Eddie Khan, 1963
Trip to the Orient with Louis Hayes, Yoshio Suzuki, 1975
Roots, Branches and Dances with Ray Drummond, Al Foster, Frank Foster, Azzedin Weston, 1978
Legacy with Ricky Ford, Bill Hardman, Walter Booker, Jimmy Cobb, 1979
Song for Leslie with Ray Drummond, Kenny Washington, 1980
So Sorry Please mit Ray Drummond, Alvin Queen, 1985
Selena's Dance with Stafford James, Tony Reedus, 1988
Stella by Starlight with Stafford James, Tony Reedus, 1988
At Cafe Des Copains, 1989
Dark Before the Dawn with Ray Drummond, Billy Higgins, 1990
Lament for Love with Frank Gant, David Williams, 1992
THE classroom filled with the sounds of a band struggling to be born, a cacophony of squealing and buzzing. Middle school students in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood were trying to produce the note F.
From top, Kenny Ocean, Maria Palacio and Cartney St. Fleur, band students at Ditmas Junior High in the Kensington section of Brooklyn.
It was early in the school year. A young professional French horn player named Alana Vegter, a thoroughbred musician trained by elite teachers, took a handful of trumpet and trombone players into an equipment supply room. Speaking in the flat tones of the Chicago suburb where she grew up, Ms. Vegter tried to coax notes out of each player. A tall sixth-grade trumpeter named Kenny Ocean, his pants sagging around his hips, played too high, then too low. A smile spread across his face when he hit it right.
“You see, every time you do it, it gets easier,” Ms. Vegter said. On her cue they all bleated together. “I’m starting to hear everybody making nice, healthy sounds,” she said, half in praise, half in hope.
So began Ms. Vegter’s year in Ditmas Junior High School, Intermediate School 62, in the Kensington section of Brooklyn. It was a year that would teach her the satisfaction of tiny victories in a place where homelessness means that some kids cannot take their instruments home to practice, where chronic asthma forces some to switch from wind instruments to percussion, where the roar of a lunchroom leaves a newcomer stunned.
Ms. Vegter, 25, was there as part of a well-financed experiment by some of the nation’s most powerful musical institutions. The experiment is called, clumsily, the Academy — a Program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and the Weill Music Institute (the institute being an arm of Carnegie).
In its second season, which ended this month, the academy extended fellowships to 34 graduates of leading music schools to receive high-level coaching and lessons in a two-year program. They play concerts on Carnegie’s stages and participate in master classes. Part of the deal is a commitment to teach one and a half days a week at a New York public school, which pays the academy $13,200 for the service.
The idea is ambitious: Mold a new kind of musician in a time of declining audiences and — seemingly — dwindling relevance for classical music. Performers focused intently on artistic development are being asked to step outside themselves and spend time away from their instruments.
“We are working to equip musicians who will continue to grow,” said Clive Gillinson, the executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall. “We’re looking at the life of the musician of the future, what it could be and what it will be. If we can enable musicians to become utterly fulfilled, they will end up contributing far more to society and to music.”
It is a noble goal, and maybe a tall order, given the glut of musicians who continue to pour out of music schools to face a life that has always been tough psychically and economically — whether for a Mozart groveling before royalty or a modern-day conservatory grad struggling through orchestra auditions in the provinces.
The academy is also intended to give a concrete boost to music education, which is held to be in serious decline: both a cause and an effect of the diminishing stature of classical music.
The program had its growing pains. One fellow was asked to leave for blowing off his teaching commitment. Others scoffed at the mushiness of teacher-training sessions. And a year spent following Ms. Vegter at Ditmas showed how high-minded concepts can run smack into reality.
At the same time the year demonstrated how one talented musician could be made wiser as a player and person, and how a little personal attention from an emissary of high culture could improve the lives of children.
MS. VEGTER, WITH HER AUBURN HAIR pulled back in a ponytail, has the carriage of a jock and the looks of a prom queen, which she once was. But her jock world was band, and her town of 13,000 people, Lemont, Ill., is band country. It is a community where music education works.
The majority of middle schoolers are in band. Competitions begin in the sixth grade. Band boosters pay for travel, instruments and uniforms. Band alumni come back for homecoming. The Lemont High School band won the state championship in its division from 1998 to 2005, including three of Ms. Vegter’s years there. Four of her classmates are professional musicians. “People respected it,” she said.
She was held in awe by fellow students in high school. “She was probably one of our top one or two or three all-time that we’ve had,” said David Nommensen, her band director.
Ms. Vegter’s father owns a carpet-cleaning company. Her mother died when she was 16. Inspired by a French horn-playing baby sitter, she began the instrument at 10 and showed immediate talent.
At DePaul University in Chicago she studied with Jon Boen, the principal of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. She played in the school band and orchestra and in the respected Civic Orchestra of Chicago, a training ground of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She went off to Juilliard for her master’s degree, one of two horn players admitted as graduate students that year, and studied with the exacting Julie Landsman, a co-principal of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 22, 2008 The cover article this weekend about a horn player who helped teach students at Ditmas Junior High School in Brooklyn how to play instruments misstates the percentage by which New York City’s financing cuts reduced the school’s budget. The school lost 1.4 percent of its financing, not 13 percent.
The musician's latest project: turning the Battery Maritime Building into a cast-iron orchestra. Video by Ben T. Brown (c) Creative Time
Lyricism in girders, harmony in rusty pipes: David Byrne in the Battery Maritime Building.
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: May 30, 2008
THE symphony of Manhattan Island, composed and performed fortissimo daily by garbage trucks, car speakers, I-beam bolters, bus brakes, warped manhole covers, knocking radiators, people yelling from high windows and the blaring television that now greets you in the back of a taxi, is the kind of music people would pay good money to be able to silence, if only there were a switch.
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
A retrofitted organ.
The other day, in a paint-peeling hangar of a room at the foot of the island, David Byrne, the artist andmusician, placed his finger on a switch that did exactly the opposite: it made such music on purpose. The switch was a white key on the bass end of a beat-up Weaver pump organ that was practically the only thing sitting inside the old Great Hall of the Battery Maritime Building, a 99-year-old former ferry terminal at the end of Whitehall Street that has sat mostly dormant for more than a half-century.
The organ’s innards had been replaced with relays and wires and light blue air hoses. And when the key was pressed, a 110-volt motor strapped to a girder high up in the room’s ceiling began to vibrate, essentially playing the girder and producing a deafening low hum — like one of the tuba tones played by the mother ship in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Or, if you were less charitably inclined, like a truck on Canal Street with a loose muffler. Mr. Byrne ran his fingers up the keyboard, causing more hums and whines, moans and plunks and clinks until he came to a key that seemed to do nothing.
“We’re not getting any register on that bottom one anymore,” he said, sending two artist-technicians up onto a scaffold to figure out why a certain magnetic knocker was not turning one of the room’s giant Corinthian columns — topped by upended, gaping dolphins — into a kind of architectural castanet.
The project Mr. Byrne has created with support from the public-art organization Creative Time is a kind of twist on the projects Creative Time has brought into being since it started helping artists use the city as a canvas in 1974. Often the organization finds dilapidated, neglected, historically rich buildings, and artists create installations inside, as the British artist Mike Nelson did last year when he turned a wing of the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side into a dimly lighted labyrinth. The ferry-terminal project, called, appropriately enough, “Playing the Building,” opens at noon on Saturday.
But in the case of Mr. Byrne — a founder of the Talking Heads who has been a visual artist as long as he has been a musician and producer — the Beaux-Arts terminal itself has become the installation, or at least a stunning, 9,000-square-foot part of it that once served as a soaring waiting room for passengers who came there to board ferries bound for South Brooklyn. The building has been one of those glorious Manhattan antiques caught in a decades-long time warp, not used for major ferry service since 1938.Plans to have it house everything from a children’s museum to a dance troupe to even Creative Time’s offices have fallen through over the years, and now a developer has been chosen to rehabilitate the terminal and build a hotel atop it.
At least for the next two and a half months, though, the building will simply serve as a gargantuan cast-iron orchestra. Besides being fitted with several motors, which produce the bass sounds by vibrating a set of girders that once supported a stained-glass skylight in the 40-foot-high ceiling, the organ is attached to a pump that blows air through a tangle of hoses. These hoses snake into the huge room’s old water and heating pipes and conduits, making primitive flute sounds. And then there are more than a dozen spring-loaded solenoids, attached like woodpeckers to the columns and even to a linebacker-size radiator that emits a surprisingly sonorous tone when struck in just the right place with a metal rod.
When you get both hands busy on the keyboard — as anyone who comes to see the work will be allowed to do — the room roars and clatters to life, seeming to harbor an invisible band playing something written by Philip Glass in collaboration with the Stooges, a Japanese sho virtuoso and a kitchen full of 3-year-olds with pots and ladles.
Working on the project recently in his SoHo studio, Mr. Byrne said he had generally avoided music-related art projects because he did not want his reputation as a musician to become confused with such work.
David Byrne’s New Band, With Architectural Solos
Published: May 30, 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
But when he was invited several years ago to propose a piece for Fargfabriken, a gallery space in a former factory in Stockholm, he began thinking about how to turn a building into an instrument. (One of his ideas for the Swedish project was to build a huge microwave oven inside the hall.) He had inherited the out-of-tune pump organ from a friend who was moving out of his print studio in the meatpacking district. And so Mr. Byrne used the organ to create the first version of “Playing the Building” in 2005.
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Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
David Byrne, master of an architectural symphony produced by the Battery Maritime Building.
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Solenoids attached to columns produce clacks and clanks.
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Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Take a bow, building: Air hoses attached to an organ make flutelike sounds inside pipes.
Because he generally likes to distance his art from his music, Mr. Byrne has not composed pieces for the building-organ and does not plan to play it publicly. But he said he hoped the project would say something about the direction of popular music.
“I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down,” he said in a discussion about the piece with Anne Pasternak, the project’s curator and Creative Time’s president. “The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world’s popular music is a good thing, for the most part.”
The music that will soon be heard from the maritime building’s infrastructure and the organ, with assistance from a stream of visitors over the summer, is essentially “authorless,” but “strongly directed,” he said.
With only four days left before the doors opened, Mr. Byrne and two people who helped build the piece, Mark McNamara and Justin Downs, were working hard one recent afternoon to arrange the organ’s keyboard so that it played the building roughly from low notes to high — very roughly. (“Nobody’s going to be able to play Bach on it,” Mr. Byrne said.)
A white rubber mallet, useful early on for determining the lyrical quality of rusty steam pipes and girders, lay atop the organ. And even with the sun streaming through the room’s expansive skylight, there was an element of gothic ghostliness about the setup, a prim-looking church organ commanding an empty waiting room. (By way of unintentional back story, to add a little extra eeriness, in 1885 The New York Times reported that J. O. Weaver, a member of the family that owned the Weaver Organ Manufacturing Company of York, Pa., became “violently deranged” in a Dallas hotel room and committed suicide by cutting his throat “from ear to ear” with a razor.)
Mr. Byrne, wearing a straw fedora with a feather stuck in the band, seemed to grow momentarily bored with architectural harmonies and took a visitor through a doorway into a shadowy hall that led to a seemingly darker history for the building: two empty meat lockers and a tiled room with a drain that might have been an abattoir, perhaps once used for supplying meat to Governors Island, whose ferry leaves from the slips below.
“There’s some really weird stuff back here,” he said.
Then he grabbed his backpack and headed out to another appointment uptown, by means of that weirdest and most musical New York City instrument of all, the subway
