Posted on by Cantara Christopher · 2 Comments

Ocean’s Kingdom, A 2011 Ballet Score by Paul McCartney, Co-Arranged and Conducted by John Wilson; Plus Howard Goodall and The Philippine Rondalla Serenata

From August, 2020: Like his coeval Pete Townshend, Paul McCartney never learned to read/write music, but like Townshend, that certainly didn’t stop him. Composer-arranger David Bennett talks about this in his latest YT podcast, “How Much Music Theory Did The Beatles Know?”

“‘The Beatles didn’t read or write sheet music, so surely they didn’t understand music theory…?’ Well, no. Reading sheet music is only part of what it means to understand music theory,” says Bennett. Which gets me fascinated enough to want to ask my beloved John Wilson how he and McCartney were able to musically communicate when they did Ocean’s Kingdom together…

gormenghast_castle_by_malex096-d65uust-1I prefer this second movement of Ocean’s Kingdom but the entire piece is worthwhile.

And just so you don’t think I’m always down on bonny John, who was himself brilliantly educated at the Royal College of Music, here’s his orchestration, written in 2002 when he was 30, of Howard Goodall’s score for the TV movie The Gathering Storm, a bit Elgarish. And here’s the orchestration he wrote when he was 28, of Richard Rodney Bennett’s music for the TV mini-series fantasy Gormenghast, which won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Film Score in 2000.

EXTRA! My favorite Beatle tune, just for my beloved conductor reverb and all: “I Feel Fine”

EXTRA EXTRA! The Philippine Rondalla Serenata* play that toe-tapping Beatles standard, “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” in traditional Philippine rondalla style

*Dedicated to showcasing the musical talent of blind and visually impaired musicians in the Philippines—here’s their Facebook page

The complete OCEAN’S KINGDOM is available on YT here

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher

Rachel Bloom Sings Her Hugo-Nominated Love Song to Her Favorite Spec-Fic Author, “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury”

I love this girl, a kindred spirit. Discovered her through her small-screen series, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015-2019). Came for the Filipinos, stayed for the Jews and the music. Oy, the songs! [Explicit “JAP Battle” version here, with dance moves. I got almost all the Jewish references, by the way, the rest I looked up.]

Click here for this VERY dirty, very funny picture of Rachel going all penilingual on spec-fic legend Ray Bradbury (a friend of my old boss Mamoulian, by the way).

And simply note that there’s nothing subtle about Rachel’s devotion to one particular maestro of the pen. And you think I’m the only crazy one out there.

The comedy short Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury was nominated in 2011 for a Hugo Award—you know, from the prestigious World Science Fiction Society, so this isn’t just any old piece of porn. So laugh your ass off, or shut up.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher

Just for My Beloved Conductor John Wilson for His Upcoming 52nd Birthday: The Story at Last of How My Parents Met and Married

Looking ahead to May 25—John, I have three stories in my repertoire I’ve been saving all these years for that one special person. Not Mister Grumble, not Mamoulian, certainly not Steve Gyllenhaal. You. You read the first one, the story of how I met agent-turned-producer Michael Linnit and had my first orgasm at the St Regis. This is the second. (The third is the story of how I got my job as Night Solfeggist at ASCAP. I’ll tell that one this summer.)

My mother at 19 looked just like this when the Japs occupied Manila. You figure out that part of her story.

I’m writing it now when I have a few minutes. Check back between when you finish up with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and before you start at Glyndebourne. It’ll be here on your birthday. I’m still in love with you and want to give you nice things.

[more of My Dad, Who Shares a Birthday with My Beloved John Wilson]

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher

“They Call the Wind Mariah” by Lerner + Loewe Sung by the Smothers Brothers, Rescuing a Fine Song from the Smelliest, Most Offensive Movie Musical Ever

Of course there’s no “h” in the actual title but I’m putting it in anyway to alert singers to the long vowel because the money-grubbing whore who wrote the lyrics to this Broadway musical standard didn’t give two shits for singers.

Above: After some silliness, the boys deliver a splendid rendition of the Frederick Loewe standard, “They Call the Wind Mariah” from Paint Your Wagon (Broadway, 1951)

I, however, have a lot of affection and admiration for Berlin-born-and-trained composer Frederick Loewe, who wrote the most tuneful, singable melodies on Broadway, up there with Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern. Loewe was right not to want to have anything to do with the big-screen disaster, Paint Your Wagon, which plowed on without him (Paramount, 1969), messing up Josh Logan, Paddy Chayefsky(!), Jean Seberg, Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, et al, in its trail…

The only way to read the 1969 film (and I don’t recommend watching it for pleasure ever ever ever, not even for yummy Clint) is to look at it like a late-60s hippie festival, complete with trees, mud, and crazy sex. (You know, like Woodstock…) The absolutely unreal pluralism of the background characters—Jews, Italians, whites (but no blacks), Chinese dressed in brocade with their wives(!?) all living in this dirty mining camp (a dirty mining camp where men politely doff their hats to white women) peacefully together—is another hippie fantasy, with a dollop of Chayefsky the liberal (of Marty and Network fame) added.

The one good thing in this pile of offal is the song, “They Call the Wind Mariah”, sung incongruously by Harve Presnell; but beautifully and hauntingly here by, of all people, the Smothers Brothers, the shining jokester-balladeer heroes of my youth. (Adding to their luster: as wartime US Army brats, they spent part of their childhood in the Philippines.)

Here’s hoping you haven’t watched/heard Paint Your Wagon. If you have, and the Andre Previn interpolations made you (like me) sick*, here are two lovely selections from the pen of Frederick Loewe, rendered by my bonny John Wilson and his various orchestras:

*…And that blustering Hollywood chickenshit should’ve punched Woody Allen in the nose.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher

A Special Letter to My Beloved John Wilson Conductor Part 2, with More Stories About My Dad (1905-1972), Who Shares His Birthday

John, it gives me such a kick telling you about my dad, I think I’ll write about him more.

Screening Room, SF 1979

Above: The Gillette Friday Night at the Fights TV Theme by Merrick+Anderson “Look Sharp Be Sharp” conducted by Eugene Ormandy. My dad’s favorite boxers: Sonny Liston (US), World Heavyweight Champion (and yeah, I greatly regard Mohammed Ali as a person but that 1965 bout in Maine was fixed—I mean, watch the film! Liston could’ve gotten up when he wanted but he purposely stayed down for the count and you can see it) —Pancho Villa (PH), World Flyweight Champion—Barney Ross (US), Lightweight, Light Welterweight, and Welterweight World Champion and loyal friend-to-the-end to Jack Ruby

He didn’t talk himself much, like a lot of other fathers I guess. He was born dirt-poor on the 25th of May, 1905 on the west coast of the big island, Luzon, on the South China Sea, in a province called Pangasinan, fabled kingdom of fabled Urduja, Warrior Queen, just like your King Arthur and yes she really lived and so did King Arthur, so there. Dad left school when he was 10, that would’ve been 1915, and went to work to support his grass widow (probably) mother. I get my Chinese heritage from dad’s distant family in Guangdong. (Catalonian and Irish from my mom.)

I don’t know how he got on for the next 12 years, but in 1927 he signed on to a cargo ship bound for San Francisco, where he ended up living for the next decade or so. SF, in some restaurant of some ex-boxer, is probably where he learned to cook, at least I’d like to think so. San Francisco is [putting finishing touches on my Kennedy piece—got some unsettling new information which I discovered on my own, absolutely NEW revelations and conjectures. You can’t believe how this is still a spooky topic in the States…I’ll finish my dad piece asap]

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher · 2 Comments

My First Music: “Dahil Sa Iyo” and My Sentimental Devotion to Bonny John Wilson, Conductor

If you could, my bonny John Wilson, imagine me wearing a maria clara (like great-grandmother Aberin below) and you wearing a barong, I’d be singing you this song:

Sa buhay ko’y labis
Ang hirap at pasakit, ng pusong umiibig
Mandi’y wala ng langit
At ng lumigaya, hinango mo sa dusa
Tanging ikaw sinta, ang aking pag-asa.

Dahil sa iyo, nais kong mabuhay
Dahil sa iyo, hanggang mamatay
Dapat mong tantuin, wala ng ibang giliw
Puso ko’y tanungin, ikaw at ikaw rin

Dahil sa iyo, ako’y lumigaya
Pagmamahal, ay alayan ka
Kung tunay man ako, ay alipinin mo
Ang lahat sa buhay ko, dahil sa iyo

“Dahil Sa Iyo”
Mike Velarde Jr music (1938), Tom Spinoza, lyrics
Cora and Santos Beloy, vocalists
Tri-World Records (1964)

Great-Grandmother Aberin 1.jpgMy mother’s lola, my great-grandmother, the spitting image of my mother the way Georgiana Drew is the spitting image of Drew Barrymore and I’m the spitting image of my dad. I have no documentation for my assertion—my gran’s house and possessions were completely destroyed during the Japanese Occupation. But whenever we came across this picture in the media—in an article in Time, for example—my mom would always point her out and tell me the story of how my great-grandfather came over from Ireland and, upon discovering he was meeting fellow Catholics in a sea of Asians, stayed, changed his name from O’Brien to Aberin, and married the local beauty. How Van Camp found her is anybody’s guess.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher · 1 Comment

Bette Midler Rises Out of a Clamshell, Sings “Oklahoma!” with a Chorus of Filipinos Just for My Bonny English Conductor John Wilson; Plus Eric and Austin Coates, Father and Son

Here’s my favorite Hawaiian-born girl singer in her 1977 TV special being pulled from the sea by astonished islanders—mostly Filipino, look at them closely—to lead a rousing chorus, with hula gestures, in THE GREATEST SHOW TUNE ever written. You got that, my Geordie love? Or is that too “exotic” for you?

Bette Midler Ol' Red Hair is Back

Above: Audio of the entire 1977 TV special “Ol’Red Hair is Back”. And here’s the entire show on YouTube.

EXTRA!

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher · 2 Comments

Evelyn Mandac Sings Gustav Mahler’s 2nd “Resurrection” Symphony in C Minor with Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy Conducts, 1970

Mahler’s “Resurrection” was voted the fifth-greatest symphony of all time in a survey of conductors carried out by BBC Music Magazine. (I wonder if my beloved conductor John Wilson voted.)

evelynmandacAbove Cebuana New York-based soprano Evelyn Mandac (b 1945), who remains one of my role models (listen to her float over the fifth movement), the only Filipino singer ever to play the Met: Mahler’s entire glorious second symphony.

Although now lauded as monuments of vision and creativity, in their time Mahler’s symphonies were occasionally reviled but more often dismissed as a conductor’s egotistical indulgence. A critic of the time called his work “one hour or more of the most painful musical torture” (and that assault was directed toward his lovely pastoral Symphony no. 4!). As late as 1952, a detractor still moaned that “an hour of masochistic aural flagellation, with all of its elephantine forms, fatuous mysticism and screaming hysteria … adds up to a sublimely ridiculous minus-zero.”

The problem wasn’t so much a matter of grasping Mahler’s musical style. As the culmination of the long line of Viennese symphonists, his ideas were firmly rooted in the conservative structures of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Bruckner. Rather, the challenge lay in its emotional premises. As critic Herbert Reid later posited, “Mahler sensed the imminent upheavals that were to shatter the rationality and optimism that had driven Western civilization up to World War I. His symphonies are spiritual quests that reflect a wholly modern ambivalence of joy and pain, faith and doubt, transcendence and perdition. Mahler was way ahead of his time. Only by the 1960s did his private anxieties at last become our own.”

The Resurrection was Mahler’s favorite symphony, which he led on many auspicious occasions, and it had the longest gestation of any of his works. The opening was completed in 1888 as “Totenfeier” (“Funeral Rites”), a stormy symphonic poem to bear the hero of Mahler’s recently-completed First Symphony to his grave, amid torment over the meaning of his life. The middle movements awaited Mahler’s summer vacation of 1893 and reflected his fascination with the same medieval folk poetry which provided the texts for most of his songs.

The first movement is hugely dramatic; according to Mahler’s own program notes it aims to convey nothing less than a search for the meaning of life. The second, representing long-forgotten pleasure, is a gentle, old-fashioned dance of lilting grace, yet challenged by creeping shadows. The third is a grotesque and wickedly sarcastic waltz, shot through with anguished outcries. The fourth is a child’s song, naïve and wistfully introspective.

And then comes the vast finale, which depicts the full terror and glory of a pagan last judgment and resurrection. It begins with a huge crash and progresses through episodes of hushed expectancy, quivering tension, funeral dirges, hopeful fanfares and fevered misgiving, culminating in a triumphant apocalyptic chorale, one of the most glorious and powerful climaxes in all of music. Mahler adds to the awesome wonder with extraordinary instrumental effects, including offstage brass, a massive battery of percussion and ultimately the sheer visceral excitement of the potent sound produced by hundreds of singers and players. ~ Peter Gutmann, Classical Notes

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher · 4 Comments

My First Music: Geraldo Among the Filipinos, 1963

God, Danny Sibolboro was such a weenie. Taken December 1963 at one of the many, many dances of the Moveable Filipino Club, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Geraldo was playing. Filipinos love Geraldo.

Cantara Dancing with Danny Sibolboro

“Hit the Road to Dreamland“
Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer (1943)
Shall We Dance?
Big Band Arrangements of Geraldo
John Wilson Orchestra
John Wilson, conductor
Vocalion, 2002

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher

Apo Whang-Od, Kalinga Tattooist and Now Vogue’s Oldest Cover Model

Apo Whang-Od, a 106-year-old tattoo artist from the Philippines, is now the oldest Vogue cover model. Whang-Od is considered her country’s oldest mambabatok — or traditional Kalinga tattooist. (Kalinga being one of the tribes in the middle of the big island, Luzon.) Her tattoos use an age-old hand-tapping technique, which she perfected as a teenager using just a bamboo stick, a thorn from a pomelo tree, water and coal. Her work is now internationally known, and she told Vogue Philippines she’s training her granddaughters in this stunning and meaningful art form.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher

Cantara Christopher Gives Her Beloved Conductor John Wilson Crib Notes on Todd Field’s Screen Masterpiece, Tár: Love, Teshuvah and Filipinos Will Save Western Music, Part 1

Everyone is getting the 2022 movie Tár wrong, everyone. Except me and Martin Scorsese.

Which is okay, because if Scorsese, Todd Field and Lydia Tár inhabit the same artistic ecosphere as I do, I don’t feel so alone. In a world 99% made up of Maxes and Tony Tarrs, I don’t feel so much alone.

So John, lamplighter of my heart, in my ongoing quest to give you nice things, I’m going to list some elements—in sequence—in the movie you might find useful next time you cocktail chat with people…

In Part 1:

  • Playing to the New York Crowd
  • Kavanah and Teshuvah in the Kabala
  • That Fantastic Red Handbag
  • We All Know That Conductors Hate Sopranos
  • Lunch With Elliot

PLAYING TO THE NEW YORK CROWD

  • It’s Francesca texting Krista on the private flight from Berlin to NYC. It’s Krista who posits to F, you still love her then…
  • Francesca is a Yale School of Music grad, probably post-grad. No matter the impression she gives of powerless and invisibility, she is actually connected and quite probably brilliant—but these days ground down. I know the feeling. Hope you never, my love.
  • The song at the beginning is in Lydian mode. (But you got that, John.) When I was 11, I was captured by the Lydian mode in this popular jukebox tune, side B of NYC-based Left Banke’s hit single.
  • In the (mostly tech/assistance) credits, there are at least 2 real people who lent their names to characters in the story, Francesca Lentini and Sebastian Brix.
  • The New Yorker Festival in which Lydia is interviewed was held 7-9 October 2022. Been to a couple of these. They’re like Glyndebourne, only without the food.
  • Lydia’s hands are beautiful my love, but no more beautiful than yours.
  • The benefit concert for Zaatari would’ve been the 10th anniversary—ten freakin years!—of that crummy refugee camp.
  • Antonia Brico was a big deal in my Women’s Liberation group in the mid 70s. You know, women of achievement. Here’s a 2018 romantic biopic of Brico, entitled The Conductor. And here’s the 1974 documentary.

KAVANAH AND TESHUVAH IN THE KABALA

  • I first got interested in Jewish mystical thought when it kept popping up in Leonard Bernstein‘s writing. The more advanced ideas, I got into at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv. I had a crush on Neil Horowitz so I followed him to Israel, after having won a CUNY scholarship to go. We learned about Maimonides, the Kabala and how to read Hebrew. Then on the way home we did it in the washroom of the El Al.
  • Kavanah means intent, just like Lydia says. She expands on this, simply and forcefully, in the master class scene.
  • Teshuvah is another matter. Teshuvah is the more important, more complex idea and it arrives close to the end of the movie so I’ll explain it more fully at the right time. Teshuvah has to do with the inevitability of creation. So you want to stick around for that.
  • You know John, this stuff is taught at the yeshiva up in Bensham, a couple miles from your childhood neighborhood of Low Fell. I know about Gateshead Talmudical College because a stateless Jewish refugee (from Cuba, he escaped, they took away his citizenship) we knew in Quito, a brilliant scholar downstairs, applied to this school so I got to read all the brochures they sent him.

THAT FANTASTIC RED HANDBAG

  • This scene was so spot on I can’t believe a man wrote it. This is the first scene in the movie that made Scorsese sit up in his seat and start to believe again.
  • Field pulled out all his AFI grad stuff for this scene. Check out Whitney’s enormous rock as she flirts with Lydia. I’m engaged, but that’s no problem. They talk about Stravinsky. Lydia throws in a really apt, really esoteric Kabalistic reference that goes right past this pretty Smith alum.
  • Lydia points at Whitney’s handbag, which is luscious, and with a fair price tag of around US800-1200 I’d say. Now, this is where most women (and certain men) in the audience call out with awed recognition, You bitch! We know you’re angling for that bag! And you know that you’re gonna get it! Because you know that rich tramp is gonna call Bergdorf’s and have one sent to you “in token of our meeting” or other bullshit… But in the end, it’s just another cheap trophy you toss to Sharon…
  • And all the while Francesca is the background, texting.

WE ALL KNOW THAT CONDUCTORS HATE SOPRANOS

  • I grew up with the story in music school, probably false, that the legendary Otto Klemperer made Kirsten Flagstad cry in rehearsals, which I suppose was the beginning of my conviction that there exists a natural antipathy between (female) vocal artists and (male) orchestra conductors.
  • So when Francesca texts Krista a shot of Lydia’s digs at the Carlyle, dubbed the “Placido Domingo Suite” and K quips, she thinks she is being ironic, you wonder in passing what the deal is between conductor Lydia and tenor Domingo.
  • But that remark is actually meant to alert us to the recentness of Francesca’s and Krista’s relationship with Lydia. Later in the movie Lydia makes a disparaging remark about the excellent mezzo Samantha Hankey—who rode to prominence quickly in 2018 after winning prizes at Gyndebourne and Placido Domingo’s own star-making Operalia (which he also conducts, by the way)—that clarifies this.

LUNCH WITH ELLIOT, OR TOSKER, MAN!

  • Tosker, man!
  • Mostly Norman Lebrecht-type stuff but we get a few necessary pieces of information, for example the Accordion Fellowship doesn’t simply place fellows in residencies, it fosters (funds?) entrepreneurship. This will figure in the Krista part of the story.
  • Elliot is a banker/lawyer/amateur conductor with biiiig pretensions. Lydia doesn’t notice his predatory tendencies because he’s gotten her fat and complacent.
  • Lydia brings up Max Bruch to affirm her place in Elliot’s society.
  • That bit about Turing Machine (a math rock group) doing Chopin’s Piano Concerto #1 in Japan, conducted by (who we later see is a dodderer) Sebastian Brix rubato has to have gotten a laugh from somebody in the audience.
  • One last one! This is the first time in the movie an Asian is clearly and lengthily shown in the background. Well dressed, middle-aged Chinese lady. You think I don’t notice these things, do you? Gwilo mooks.

Next: The Master Class

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON