Broadway Classroom

Another highlight of our New York trip (It was pretty much all highlights!) was the group's Broadway Classroom experience. Members of the girls choir, parents, and chaperones all participated in an excellent crash course in Broadway performance culture presented by Brent Frederick, a very active music director-pianist-conductor, and Scott Mikita, a swing from the current Phantom cast. They led us through a portion of the number "Masquerade," ably teaching the music, the diction, the choreography, and holding a little mock audition. This was all really fun and I highly recommend it to other groups of musicians going to New York.

In case you're wondering, a swing is a performer with the capability and flexibility to perform various roles in a production depending upon who is ill on any given occasion. In Mr. Mikita's situation, this involves being prepared with music, text, choreography, and acting for the majority of the major male roles in Phantom eight times a week, and sometimes portions of multiple roles during the same performance. That's very, very impressive.

While we're considering what these gentlemen do for a living, I would encourage music students to take a look at Mr. Frederick's resume. I'm sure you'll notice the variety of musical work he has done from regional theater to a cruise ship show to Broadway. Also, notice his degree - music education! This should be enlightening to those who are concerned about what job their degree might lead to. This should also wake up some who are in a confused sleep and are dreaming that music ed people pursue their degrees because they can't make it in a more performance-based part of the music world. Lastly, be sure to read through the list of skills he shares to make himself more marketable. I've copied it below. These amount to keyboard skills, aural theory, and technology studies - the things you often wonder when you'll ever need them. I just happened to notice these this morning and thought I should point them out.

SPECIAL SKILLS

• Sight-reading, including audition accompanying for NYC casting directors and for Broadway shows.

• Transcribing by ear.

• Tech guru: Expert proficiency in Finale and Sibelius; synthesizer programming; digital audio workstations including Pro Tools, Digital Performer, Logic, and Ableton Live; orchestral mockups

  Now for what I've been wanting to share.


Mr. Frederick and Mr. Mikita presented a superb session that showed how all the fundamentals of creative work - the musical disciplines you learn in school - are the exact things you apply everyday in the professional world of music performance. Personally, it was affirming to hear the same messages I heard from my teachers - messages that I try to convey to my students - being promulgated by these artists in their part of the culture.


What are those messages?

1. Arts are multi-layered and the performing arts require that performers engage with the layers.

You learn notes, technique, diction, musicality, choreography, etc., and then, keep adding more and more layers to make the end result an awesome expression, something out of the ordinary.

2. Subtext, subtext, subtext.

You need to apply all the aspects of all those layers with reason. Whether you're playing notes or moving across the stage, there has to be something going through your mind, something stirring your emotions. Otherwise, the audience gets no charge. Singers do it. Choreographers do it . . . It's how you make your motivation a part of the work.

3. The audience gets it.

The audience doesn't have time to deconstruct and evaluate each and every little move. Hopefully, you've saturated everything with ideas through years of focus and months of rehearsal. That sustained effort, that care for the work, comes through, at the very least, on the subconscious level. That might work better for the experience of art, anyway.

4. Conductors and directors want to see that you can take direction.

Hopefully your brilliance will show up and show through at your audition, but if you can't be responsive to the ones with the vision for the show, that won't matter much. The more malleable you are, and the less room has to be made for your personality, the better. So, as Mr. Mikita put it, "Be game and it'll be fun."

5. Education that is both specific and well-rounded is key.

During the question and answer time at the end of our session, Mr. Mikita was asked about what a young person with an interest in a career in theater should be doing now. His answer? Do as much theater as you can. Live life - theater isn't about theater; it's about the world outside the theater. And go to college.

Finally, I would add that these two successful genetlemen were balanced, poised, and readily able to engage with their students and fellow human beings in a normal, healthy, positive way: not the warped stereotype of artists that's often promoted but the reality of disciplined professionals, whatever their field.

Thank you, sirs, for modelling musicianship, professionalism, good teaching, humility, and humanity for my young friends and me!

Jazz at Lincoln Center

While in New York, Kathy and I visited one of America’s great art music temples – Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Sitting atop several floors of the Shops at Columbus Circle, the entrance to the venue is a lively place with a bit of the ambiance of a grand cinema. The occasion was the conclusion of a season exploring “how jazz has both integrated and influenced the rich musical traditions of the Caribbean and North, South, and Central America.” The performance was a tribute to Latin Jazz greats, Tito Puente and Machito, coordinated by bassist Carlos Henriquez.

At first blush, one saw that the three percussionists basically functioned as one organism, the saxophones sounded like a rank of organ pipes, and the persistent presence and miraculous nuance of the cowbell made it the soprano soloist of the group. Soon the trumpets started playing masterful improvisations.

As the evening went on, I started to recognize the many layers that made the experience so good. In  addition to all of the above, the instruments were simply played very, very well. Each musician's sound was rich, warm, brilliant, and distinctive. When combined, the instruments of the ensemble were also a marvel of sonority, blend, and coordination. Undergirding it all, professionalism was a given.

Then there was the excitement, imagination, and genius inspiration of the music itself - tremendous diversity joyfully combined in close-knit communities all across the stage. The mission statement of Jazz at Lincoln Center puts it like this:

We believe Jazz is a metaphor for Democracy. Because jazz is improvisational, it celebrates personal freedom and encourages individual expression. Because jazz is swinging, it dedicates that freedom to finding and maintaining common ground with others. Because jazz is rooted in the blues, it inspires us to face adversity with persistent optimism.

Education is also a core value of Jazz at Lincoln Center and the evening's performers were unabashed advocates for the continuation of their tradition. History was alive and onstage with them as they expressed the importance of doing our generation's duty of appreciating and handing on this heritage. That duty involves not just hearing, loving, and sharing the music, but also supporting the infrastructure necessary to keep it going - publications of scholarship, outreach programs, and the hall itself. A decade into its existence, it's already time to update the fantastic facility in which these fine musicians perform. 

Twelve plus hours after the concert, I was still feeling its rhythms. But on the night of, the audience's well developed patina of concert etiquette seemed to inhibit a visceral response to the stirring elements of this music rooted in ancient religions. A little dancing broke out at the end, but only after considerable cajoling from the stage.

Reflecting on the specialness of that evening and of the performers who made it possible, I realized more fully that charisma is not a way one acts but is an entrancing and involving thing that sometimes sneaks in unnoticed when one is very truly doing.




  

Morning Has Broken

Quite some time has passed since my last bit of blogging. Most of that time has been spent in activities concluding the school year. I believe things at school, at the Lasker Summer Music Festival, and with my life in general are in an interim period as we prepare for the dawning of a new era. Thus, it seems appropriate to blog today about experiences with the hymn known to many of us as "Morning Has Broken."

The tune name is BUNESSAN which is also the name of a little town on the Ross of Mull, a peninsula on the Scottish island of Mull. Kathy and I passed through the town on our way to Iona about this time last summer. Here's a picture I took somewhere around Bunessan.

As I recently shared with a friend, it seems to me that a lot of old tunes such as this one reflect the contour of the landscapes in which they came into being. The rapid but lyrical and airy rises and falls of BUNESSAN seem to fit well with the mountain vistas and sea scenes that one can view from the town.

We don't know exactly where the tune comes from, and the actual reason it is known as BUNESSAN is that it was first published with a text by Mary MacDonald (1789-1872), poet, Baptist, and wife to a crofter who lived and created her work near Bunessan. Here is the rich first verse of her famous text:

Child in the manger,
infant of Mary;
outcast and stranger,
Lord of all;
Child who inherits
all our transgressions,
all our demerits
on Him fall.

Many wonderful texts have since been paired with this great tune. Taking time to sing through the page scans on the Hymnary.org page for BUNESSAN can be a heart-warming devotional activity. In addition to the well-known "Morning Has Broken," you will also find a lovely wedding hymn, a powerful Trinitarian text by John Bell, and a version of St. Patrick's Breastplate.

Finally, I would like to share my own version which is what prompted all my thinking this weekend about BUNESSAN. 

During this summer's Lasker Summer Music Festival, I presented a recital and a talk exploring the goodness of diversity. The recital was a tour of works not included on the usual classical piano itinerary which consists mostly of German and Austrian journeys with occasional side-trips through France, Spain, and Russia. I've copied the program at the end of this post for the curious reader.

The second half of the recital was framed by works that reference the diversity of creation, not just the diversity of nations. (The first half was framed by works that reference various Americas that exist within the nation we call the United States.)

I wrote my arrangement of "Morning Has Broken" for an SEU student who, at the time, was a church music major. She has since gone on to be a missionary in Tanzania. BUNESSAN was a meaningful tune to her and her mother. In addition, she was studying the first prelude in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and was good at major scales. You can hear those influences in the arrangement. In addition, each section of the arrangement expresses a key phrase from one of the verses -

 "Blackbird has spoken like the first bird."

"Sweet the rain's new fall . . . like the first dewfall"
 

"Mine is the sunlight!"

The photos posted with the performance are from Pentecost morning in Lasker. It was on this visit to Lasker that I realized that, similar to Iona, Lasker is a "home for music pilgrims."

Lasker Summer Music Festival 2015

Lasker Baptist Church

July 22, 2015      7:30 P.M.

Charles Hulin, piano

Kathy Hulin, horn           Greg Parker, baritone

Jefferson’s March                                                       Alexander Reinagle

Rapsodia Negra                                                               Ernesto Lecuona

Live, Laugh, Love                                                               Charles Hulin

Allqamari Kanki!                                                                Quechua Song

Tango Finale                                                                      Astor Piazzolla

Ghost Dance of the Zuñis                                                    Carlos Troyer

 Intermission

Morning Has Broken                                                    Arr. Charles Hulin

Gamelan                                                                      Leopold Godowsky

The Law and the Prophets                                            Han song, adapted

Adventures of an African Boy                                     Margaret Goldston

         Theme

         Along the Zambesi River  

         Meeting a Chimpanzee

         Dancing with a Friend      

         A Rest under the Baobob Tree

         A Stroll through Waving Elephant Grass     
         Racing with a Giraffe

         A Tribal Ceremony

Graceful Ghost Rag                                                           William Bolcom

All Creatures of Our God and King                            Arr. Richard Walters