Frank Zappa. Don Giovanni, Intentional listening.

Roger CortonWe got the most comments since I’ve been on board about your remark regarding Frank Zappa Guitar Player. You touched a nerve.

JCHYeah, I don’t have to work very hard to alienate people it seems. I got to fill in at Don Giovanni and it happened there too.

RCI didn’t know there were any parts for Telecaster in Mozart.

JCHThere’s not. But there is a mandolin bit at the beginning of Act II. A lot of operas have these oddball interludes. I actually only had about two minutes of work and that was the problem. They were not thrilled when I asked if I could split after my part was over. There’s this seemingly inviolable rule against moving once the music starts. If you don’t have anything to do? Tough. So asking was in itself a reason to not be considered for future work.

RCSo this is what gets me about you. You know this, […]

Four tickets. 😀 I love that joke.

A discussion of the current state of music theatre in general and the opera Detroit

I await with terror every one of these long musical evenings.–Friedrich Nietzche re. Wagner’s Ring

I just got my complimentary ticket for the annual ‘Wagner Competition’. I still receive stuff like this for some tangential reason because the Seattle Opera was one of the places I got a bit of money to write Detroit The Opera. And that reminded me. Now that some time has elapsed, I’ve been meaning to mention a few things regarding ‘Detroit’ as well as the state of music drama in general. I’ve been reluctant to talk about this stuff until now for fear of burning bridges. Well, that boat has sailed. If burning bridges can sail (on a sea of chocolatey metaphors.)

Like all arts organisations, the Seattle Opera faces an existential crisis. It has been led by Speight Jenkins for so long no one can remember ‘life before Speight’. But now […]

I am not 100% certain, but I believe this was the version that Neemi Jarvi used to play to open Sunday afternoon concerts of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra 25 years ago. If this isn’t the same version, it ought to be. Jarvi would walk briskly on stage, with a walking bow to the audience, then immediately raise the stick and break into this. And then the show would begin. No fuss. Just crisp. The older I get, the more I appreciate it when a guy knows how to put on a show. This was a class touch on top of a very civilised way to spend a Sunday.

I prefer this to almost any other arrangement. It has far less of the late-romantic schmaltz than other versions–which strike me as sentimental.

I actually didn’t realise this was Stravinsky’s arrangement for a long time. It just seemed like a very crisp, spare orchestration which I felt struck the right tone—perhaps maybe a bit too spare but overall far […]