[ Lost in the Landscape ]

distractions, distractions

I’ve been MIA from read­ing my favorite gar­den blogs, and I’ve been AWOL from post­ing. You know the story…life happens.

At least the first dis­trac­tions was garden-related.

I posted this photo months ago. It’s of the back­side of an out­door fire­place after we removed a rot­ted wooden fence that the pre­vi­ous own­ers poured con­crete around to form a gar­den bench. The world has only a cer­tain amount of abject ugli­ness and a big pile of it sat in the back yard. So…what to do with it?

We thought about cladding it in some­thing, maybe some cement panel pieces left­over from a pre­vi­ous house project. Or maybe grow a vine. Ryan sug­gested stuc­co­ing the ugly mound.

We ended up with one of the more rad­i­cal solu­tions: Make the whole mess go away.

Well, actu­ally, it’s been sev­eral weeks of chis­el­ing out the old bricks, one at a time, try­ing to save them for some some­thing. But hope­fully not another house project using brick. I’m com­ing to hate the stuff. This house 25 years ago came with brick walk­ways, brick walls, brick patios, brick every­thing. Enough already! There may be a Craigslist ad in our future.

And after the brick there were a few hun­dred lit­tle tiles that had to be chipped off the bench. I can blame the ugly mor­tar mess on the back of the fire­place on the pre­vi­ous owner, but the tile was my own bit of youth­ful excess, try­ing to pret­tify a seri­ously imper­fect slab of con­crete. Paint is easy to undo. Tile is not.

So that’s been dis­trac­tion #1.

Dis­trac­tion #2 hasn’t got much to do with the gar­den. Recently I got it in mind that I wanted to learn a new piece of music, the piano part for John Adams’ wild Road Movies, for vio­lin and piano. Here’s a YouTube video of a nice per­for­mance of the last move­ment, par­tic­u­larly of the swing­ing piano part. (Ignore the scream­ing child near the conclusion.)

The gar­den project should be done before too too too long–more to fol­low for sure. But this music is going to take a while longer. It almost makes you pine for liv­ing in a cli­mate where the gar­den shuts down for six months, leav­ing you with lit­tle to do but indoor stuff…like bak­ing and art and music.

May 24 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: brick • demolition • hardscape • i hate brick • music | 9 Comments »

concert review: concerto for florist

George Schlat­ter, cre­ator of the late 60s/early 70s clas­sic TV show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In, recently said this about enter­tainer Tiny Tim of “Tip­toe Through the Tulips” fame: “One time we filled his dress­ing room with flow­ers and he came out cry­ing because he said we had killed the flowers!”–Quoted in the Los Ange­les Times

Well, I didn’t cry, but by the end of the world pre­miere per­for­mance of Mark Applebaum’s Con­certo for Florist and Orches­tra many flow­ers had given their lives in the name of art. I wrote a quick post last week about this odd lit­tle bit of music the­ater that was going to be played by the La Jolla Sym­phony with florist soloist James Del­Prince. Sat­ur­day night I went to the concert.

Some of the buckes of flow­ers before the soloist and orches­tra took to the stage

Over the course of three move­ments the solo florist arranged flow­ers man­i­cally while the orches­tra plunged into a score that had some really strik­ingly beau­ti­ful pas­sages as well as some butt-kicking moments. In one of the move­ments the strings slid around in qui­etly dis­so­nant clouds of sound while tuned gongs sounded above the clouds. In another the orches­tra bounced along on tricky rhythms, egged on by the per­cus­sion. And at the end the ensem­ble pretty much fiz­zled out in an orches­trated dis­so­lu­tion of the music. All this time the florist attacked buck­ets of raw flo­ral mate­r­ial and stabbed the stems into bricks of green florist foam.

The set piece that was con­structed dur­ing the sec­ond movement

While all this was hap­pen­ing I kept with­ing the florist would dis­ap­pear so that I could just con­cen­trate on the music. I’m sure there were oth­ers who’d have pre­ferred the orches­tra take their dis­so­nant chords home and let the florist arrange away in peace. What­ever. In the end it wasn’t much more than a stunt. Still, the stunt pretty much filled the hall, and the piece got more applause than you’d have expe­ri­ence down­town at the more staid symphony.

Part of the flo­ral cre­ation that was made dur­ing the third move­ment grand finale

Before the con­cert the com­poser had a chance to speak, and said some­thing like how he was bored of a lot of reg­u­lar music and that he’d “rather fail in an inter­est­ing way than suc­ceed at doing some­thing nor­mal.” So yes, I think he man­aged to fail interestingly.

As far as the flo­ral cre­ations, they were nice enough, but I think I’ve seen much more com­pelling avant-garde arrang­ing done. Just think of the amaz­ing Japan­ese ike­bana cre­ations that you can see every now and then. The arrange­ments reminded me of the mon­ster show­piece “cakes” that you see assem­bled on the real­ity TV sub­genre devoted to cake dec­o­rat­ing and cake dec­o­rat­ing com­pe­ti­tions. They’re always impres­sive because of the sheer size and fragility, but so often the ideas behind the cakes just seem trite. Sorry. I sound like such a snot sometimes.

At the con­clu­sion of the Con­certo for Florist and Orches­tra every­one with a cell­phone cam­era had to make their way up on stage to snap some shots of the fin­ished arrangement

So, are there any real­ity TV shows devoted to florists? Florists work­ing with stressed peo­ple try­ing to pre­pare for a wed­ding? Or deal­ing with griev­ing fam­i­lies after a loved one has passed on? Or work­ing with the hap­less bach­e­lor try­ing to impress the new love inter­est with a pile of so many dead roses Tiny Tim would be bawl­ing? If Bravo or Life­time sud­denly comes up with one, remem­ber you saw the idea here first.

March 17 2011 | Categories: art | Tags: concert review • concertos • floral design • florists • flower arrangements • flower arranging • music | 6 Comments »

music for the eyes

Here’s a fun one: My local community/university orches­tra will be pre­mier­ing a new piece this week­end. Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity com­poser Mark Apple­baum has com­posed a work for orches­tra with a spe­cial, unusual soloist: a florist.

The Con­certo for Florist and Orches­tra riffs on the tra­di­tional notion of a con­certo, where one or more vir­tu­oso solists duke it out musi­cally with an accom­pa­ny­ing ensem­ble. In the new work, the orches­tra will play and the florist will…presumably array flow­ers and leaves vir­tu­os­ti­cally all over the stage. Some musi­cal con­certo soloists have rep­u­ta­tions for being high-strung indi­vid­u­als, and to my mind the new piece also riffs on the idea of florists some­times hav­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for being just as high-strung.

The work’s soloist will be James Del­Prince, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Plant and Soil Sci­ences with a spe­cial­iza­tion in Flo­ral Design and Inte­rior Plantscap­ing Design at Mis­sis­sippi State Uni­ver­sity. On his cam­pus biog­ra­phy page Del­Prince writes, “The aes­thet­ics of hor­ti­cul­ture involve recog­ni­tion of the intrin­sic beauty of plants and flow­ers along with the prac­ticed skill of flo­ral design and inte­rior plant place­ment. I enjoy and value the oppor­tu­nity to bring under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of flo­ral and plant design to peo­ple.” And this weekend’s performance–the sec­ond time Del­Prince has worked flo­ral magic with Mark Applebaum’s music to accom­pany him–seems like a great way to bring some of that appre­ci­a­tion to a dif­fer­ent sort of audi­ence than peo­ple look­ing for some­thing to dec­o­rate their wedding.

If you want more tra­di­tional fare, the all-concerto con­cert opens with Prokofiev’s Sec­ond Vio­lin Con­certo, with Han­nah Cho, win­ner of the orchestra’s 2009 Youth Artist Com­pe­ti­tion. Clos­ing the evening will be another “con­cep­tual con­certo,” Béla Bartók’s Con­certo for Orches­tra, a con­certo with no soloists at all other than mem­bers of the orches­tra, all of whom will have to work pretty hard to play the score.

One of my music profs from many years ago, Robert Erick­son, was famous for shut­ting his eyes when lis­ten­ing to per­for­mances. He wasn’t bored; he just didn’t want the visu­als to get in the way of truly hear­ing the music. You won’t want to shut your eyese for Saturday’s and Sunday’s performances.

The La Jolla Sym­phony per­forms. Steven Schick conducts.

March 10 2011 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: concertos • cut flowers • florists • music | 9 Comments »

loud music and sage

I drove all the way up to Los Ange­les for an organ recital last night. I knew I was in for trou­ble when the usher handed me a pro­gram and offered me a pair of earplugs. But more on that later.

John hates the idea of me to tak­ing my scooter to LA, so I grudg­ingly drove the gas-devouring Jeep. But to turn the sit­u­a­tion to an advan­tage I stopped by the Tree of Life Nurs­ery in San Juan Capis­trano. It’s a few miles east of I-5, but ten ten min­utes of dri­ving off the inter­state beats an hour and a half each direc­tion from San Diego.

I’d been plan­ning on doing some­thing with the unclaimed zone between my house and the neigh­bor behind me, and I wanted some native plants to fill in the zone. This would be a good chance to pick up some plants with­out the ridicu­lous commute.

The plant­i­ngs around the nurs­ery fea­tured some vibrant spring flow­ers, includ­ing this stand of Cal­i­for­nia pop­pies and vivid vio­let phacelia.

And this traf­fic cone mal­low was pretty spec­tac­u­lar as well (prob­a­bly desert mal­low, Sphaer­al­cea ambigua).

While there I picked up some plants for my project, includ­ing some more plants of white sage (Salvia api­ana) and a clone of pur­ple sage (Salvia leu­co­phylla ‘Amethyst Bluff’). I’ll post more on that project later in the week.

Nego­ti­at­ing LA rush hour traf­fic can be an ordeal, and doing it with a dozen plants in the back of the car wasn’t any­thing I was look­ing for­ward too, espe­cially if I had to jam on the brakes. But traf­fic was fairly light and I got to my des­ti­na­tion with plenty of time for a relax­ing din­ner before the concert.

And now, on to the con­cert: When the lights dimmed, a man got up to intro­duce the per­former for the evening. Charle­magne Pales­tine was one of the fig­ures active in the avant-garde music scene, first in New York around 1970, and slightly later in Los Ange­les. The man intro­duc­ing him apol­o­gized that dur­ing ear­lier rehearsals they’d blown three fuses on the organ, and that they might need to inter­rupt the con­cert to replace more fuses.

The con­cert loca­tion, the First Con­gre­ga­tional Church of Los Ange­les, claims to have the world’s largest indoor church organ, a mon­ster with well over 20,000 pipes. What would the sound be if you got sev­eral thou­sand of them going at the same time? The audi­ence got to find out about an hour into the piece.

What had started out as a wispy cloud of del­i­cate sus­tained notes had grad­u­ally gown in inten­sity as organ stops got added. When the composer/performer finally did a face-plant into the key­board around the 60 minute mark and remained there unmov­ing for a good ten min­utes, the hall shook with a throb­bing earth­quake of sound that with zero doubt was the loud­est, most intense, most jar­ring ten min­utes of any­thing I’ve ever heard in my life. (There’s a record­ing of Schling-Blägen, the piece Charle­magne Pales­tine per­formed in con­cert, but that in no way gives pre­pares you for the phys­i­cal assault that the you’ll expe­ri­ence live.)

When the piece ended, I was still shak­ing. I wasn’t sure I could drive home very reli­ably, and I was glad I wasn’t on the scooter.

As I opened the car door, the smell of sage escaped from plants behind the back seat. It’s said that sage tea is good for calm­ing the nerves, and the same could prob­a­bly be said for the aroma from the plants. With all my nerves still fir­ing on over­load, it was prob­a­bly the per­fect rem­edy for what I’d just expe­ri­enced. When I got home two hours later, I lay down, and went right to sleep.

PS: I’ve only talked about the loud­ness of the piece, but in the final analy­sis there was a lot of beauty and del­i­cacy in it as well. I loved it. Music can take you many places. This piece took me some­where I’ve never been.

March 17 2009 | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: Charlemagne Palestine • music • sages • Tree of Life Nursery | 2 Comments »

celebrating summer–medieval-style

Ah sum­mer, the sea­son when the meadow blooms and the stag farts! Here are some sprightly words cel­e­brat­ing the sea­son we’ve just begun. They’re the lyrics to a bouncy lit­tle ditty circa the year 1260 that most stu­dents going through music his­tory courses will have have run across. If your Mid­dle Eng­lish is about as bad as mine, I’ve pro­vided a translation.

You can sing it all by your­self, but it’s designed to be four-part round that you sing over a two-part ground. If you’re tired of “Row, row, row your boat” as the only round to sing at sum­mer camp this might be just the ticket. Below is the music (click it to enlarge). And if you want to sing along, click here for an mp3 file [ source ].

Sumer is icu­men in, tran­scribed from the ca. 1260 man­u­script by Bla­hedo, used under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion Share Alike 2.5 license [ source ].

Warn­ing: Once you lis­ten to it a few times–and maybe even sing along–it gets to be one of those “It’s a Small World” ear­worm tunes that you’ll have a hard time get­ting rid of.

Find out more.
And if anyone’s read­ing this in the South­ern hemi­sphere, here’s Ezra Pound’s win­ter par­ody. (I guess he wasn’t par­tic­u­larly fond of winter.)

June 29 2008 | Categories: rambles | Tags: music • seasons • sumer is icumen in • summer | No Comments »