paul_viapiano_guitarist

music, technology & life in pasadena, california

Why I Love Frank Gehry

In Barbara Isenberg’s new book, Conversations with Frank Gehry, Gehry talks about his empathy and concern for musicians and how it influenced his design for the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles:

In my initial statement, I talked about a need to make the musicians feel important. So another big piece of this was what the building did for the musicians: what it meant to them, how they felt in it, how they got to it, their point of arrival in their cars, where they parked, where their dressing rooms were. I felt, and the client felt, all of these things were important…

The message you get when you go backstage at most concert halls is that you’re in a dungeon. These poor bastards: they’re asked to come out onstage in their tuxes and play beautiful music, then go back in their holes.

…it was written into the program that the musicians would get facilities that most orchestras don’t get. We thought the ambience was important in order to get people in the mood for making music.

June 15, 2009 | Link to this entry

The Pause Button

For a long time, recorded music wasn’t allowed in theatres except for possibly the inclusion of source music, that is, music the characters in a story can actually hear on the radio, television, etc. The worry was that eventually producers would start using recorded music to replace live musicians, even though live music has always been a huge part of the Broadway tradition, but in recent years that fear has indeed come to be realized in various guises.

The virtual orchestra, a sequencer controlling a bank of sound modules and controlled by a player (ha!) tapping a touchpad in time to a live conductor, has been trying to claw its way into theatres since its invention. Marketed for use in school and community productions, where budgets are nonexistent and a dearth of good players sometimes exists, they promise to enhance these amateur offerings. I can see the intentions of the marketers, but students don’t really learn anything about playing together by playing along with a machine.*

Utilizing sampling technology, whereby a natural instrument is duplicated electronically from samples of actual sounds and brought together with sequencing software, which puts all the instruments together in time, the missing element is the actual performance of the individual player, hence the heart and soul of the sound itself. Fortunately, I’ve never had to play along with one of these gadgets, but I have several friends who’ve been forced into this predicament. The shrill sounds and stiff metric performances may be able to fool some audiences but no musician will ever be conned into thinking that this is as natural as playing along with a fellow human, however good enough is good enough for many producers who are mainly interested in the bottom line, tradition be damned. In the meantime, they still charge $100 a ticket to an unsuspecting public, not realizing they’re seeing the cut-rate version of a show that originally had 20 or more players in the pit.

Recently, some shows have received permission from the international musicians union (exclusion of initial caps intended) to use prerecorded material in conjunction with live playing from a local orchestra. The bottom line is usually what’s being looked after, as they can hire half as many players and still get a fuller sound after it’s been beefed up by the tracks, however, these tracks aren’t always of the highest quality in terms of sound, performance and rhythmic time. That’s because, in an effort to save even more money, tracks are recorded by musicians who are plainly sub par, where the only clicks they’re likely to know about are related to their computer mice.

Orchestras, like all other organizations that thrive on teamwork, are only as good as their weakest members and when that weakest member is a poorly recorded, poorly played or poorly edited track, it brings an otherwise potentially inspiring performance down to a lower common denominator.

Musicians and audiences deserve better.


* Some schools hire a few professional musicians to sit among the student players, which has several benefits. The sound of the orchestra is stronger and more focused plus the students gain the huge advantage of working alongside a positive musical role model. The use of a machine to “enhance” student musicals also laments the loss of the charm of an amateur production; must everything be a slick and glossy techno-show, to say nothing of the falsifying effect on student egos which are already inflated due to the push for “self esteem” which has already had a detrimental effect on the student musician’s mindset (see video).

June 2, 2009 | Link to this entry

Words vs. Music

On the evening of February 12, 2009 a Continental Connections flight bound for Buffalo, NY crashed just one minute before its expected landing, now known to be caused by icing conditions and human error. Onboard that flight were two musicians: Guitarist Coleman Mellett and saxophonist Gerry Niewood, both players in Chuck Mangione’s band.

My friend Kevin Axt, bassist for Chuck Mangione, and one of the most talented, soulful and eloquent people I know, granted me his kind permission to publish his words and thoughts written shortly after attending Gerry Niewood’s memorial service in early March.

Words vs. Music

I suppose that it's rather ironic to comment on the effect that music has on us by using words, but I'm afraid that this written-word medium is the distillation process through which these thoughts and feelings must pass. Gerry Niewood was and is a great friend and musical partner. At his memorial service yesterday I was struck by the phenomenon of the contrasting visceral effects between words and music. Gerry's son Adam, a great sax player in his own right, wordlessly began the service by fronting a quartet that included Jim McNeely (p), Chris Higgins (b), and Bill Goodwin (d). They played jazz standards in a big resonant stone church. No mics. Every note heartfelt and laden with love, longing, gratitude, remembrance, worship; All the things that Gerry meant to these musicians as well as the assembled family and friends. Of course these same notes carried subtexts that cannot be described with words, yet were felt by all in attendance- timeless expressions of thought and emotion- spiritual expression without ideological definition. I let these notes move me and wash over me and through me. Then the service started, and by this I mean the words. The words were beautiful too, but they felt limited and fundamental. The music felt like a multidimensional crystal into which one peered- where the slightest twist of the wrist would reveal an entirely new universe. The words were flat like paper. I found my mind wandering, almost impatient. The words were spoken artfully, yet the content felt slow and cumbersome and monochromatic. I did my very best to attend, but the notes continued to reverberate within me causing my thoughts to disconnect from the words, seeking more fertile ground. As musicians we understand that we are gifted with the ability to communicate with the language of music. We experience the bliss of creating moments in time that levitate our beings; egoless expressions of the content of our hearts and souls which we share with each other and all those present to witness these moments. These are discourses of the highest order- the ultimate interfaith worship.

People came and went from the podium on the stage. They shared personal observations of Gerry and they offered their perspectives on the irrational twist of fate that brought Gerry's death. And then the musicians would play again. Gene Bertoncini played a solo nylon string guitar and took me to that place again- the place where I could feel Gerry and all the other musicians that were fortunate enough to make music with him. Chuck Mangione stood before a mic and in a voice choked with emotion, shared his tribute to Gerry honoring him as a great friend and musician. He then moved away from the mic to the center of the stage and played two choruses of Amazing Grace with absolute perfection. It was a mystical act of superhuman strength that provided the most profound moment of the service. We felt his love for Gerry and the anguish of his loss, all of our losses, in every note; the last of which trailed off for 20 seconds, a perfect decrescendo into absolute nothingness. We heard 50 years of love, and friendship and pain in a single resolute fading note.

How is this done? Words have not been invented to explain; we as musicians simply know this as a simple fundamental fact of what we do. We may occasionally forget how blessed we are to possess this gift and to share it among ourselves and with others that are not as blessed. Music is both this thing that we get to create and a mystical force that we get to channel at the same time. All the physical rules of the universe as we know them do not apply. Those of us fortunate enough to contribute to this force are granted a kind of eternal life. Those of us that leave too soon are no less eternal. Those of us left behind can only attempt to grasp the magnitude of the gift that we've been given as musicians, and our lives are the joyously futile pursuit of expressing our gratitude for such a gift. Gerry's playing and his life manifested this thing which I can't explain yet we all understand.

- Kevin Axt

May 19, 2009 | Link to this entry

Zubin

Several years ago, I don’t remember when exactly, I had the chance to play Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins with the LA Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. This wasn’t during Zubin’s reign as music director of the orchestra (how old do you think I am?) but as a visiting guest conductor during Esa-Pekka’s tenure. The piece begins, as I recall, with a small clarinet figure, a dotted-eighth-then-sixteenth upbeat to the first bar, and the banjo plays beat two and four and so on in that inimitable style of Weimar backbeats Weill made so ubiquitous in much of his music.

In each rehearsal, Zubin conducted the upbeat and the downbeat, as well as the first bar, in one tempo, no stretching of the phrase. It was all business with him. On the night of the first concert, he gave the upbeat, the downbeat, and milked the hell out of that first beat and totally laid back the attack of beat two. It was unexpected, exciting and scary at the same time. I played that backbeat exactly where he placed it, and before beat four came around I looked up to see him staring at me with a big impish grin on his face! What a troublemaker…

Here’s a great quote from Zubin’s new autobiography that shows a wonderful insight I’ve rarely experienced or seen in words before. It shows the true meaning of musical collaboration.

Orchestras have a definite musical memory, and a conductor must see it as something being offered him by the orchestra. This kind of memory should never be underestimated; instead, it should be utilized as much as possible…If a conductor realizes this while he is still young, it helps him get past his uncertainties and doubts, not to mention the mistakes he will inevitably make.

What is needed is a willingness on the conductor’s part to take the musicians’ experiences and memories seriously and even to incorporate them, no matter how many years it may take. Only then can a conductor attain the necessary maturity, insight, understanding, and feel for the music he wants to perform. These qualities are just as important as all the analytical skills

- from Zubin Mehta’s new autobiography, Zubin Mehta: The Score Of My Life

May 11, 2009 | Link to this entry

Profundity

Last night at bedtime, my young daughter said to me, “If you don’t love yourself, no one will love you.”

“Where did you learn that?”, I asked.

“I just know it,” she replied.

April 23, 2009 | Link to this entry

Reset

As mentioned in my earlier post, our family spring break vacation took us to the south rim of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. The drive from our base in Tucson took about 5 hours (via Sedona, where we stayed overnight). We lodged just outside of the GC National Park in Tusayan, which is a one road town (with an airport!) full of motels and restaurants; in other words, your basic American tourist destination.

Arriving at the entrance the next morning, we were buoyed by the fact that it only costs about $20 per car for a 7-day pass to the park. (Park is the wrong word for this place. It must be a million acres or more…!) After parking (yes, it was crowded, but nowhere near as bad as the stories I’ve heard about Yosemite), a short walk to South Rim Village and slightly beyond brought the entire canyon into view. It was an awesome experience to see it for ourselves after seeing endless photographs in books. It’s so huge that it doesn’t seem real. We quickly devised a plan for seeing as much as we could in the few short days we had.

A shuttle bus system is available to get you between the many stations along the rim route, or you could hike between them. A combination of the two seemed best for us, as the shuttles became pretty full at certain points. The hiking is generally easy, although there are a few spots that will challenge you, especially at 7,000 feet! Our 5 ½ year old daughter kept up pretty well despite occasional whining about the cold weather, walking too much, or something or other. I’ll admit to being winded a few times and yelling at my wife to “slow down, would ya?” but she would have none of that, which brings me to wonder why women will race through a leisurely walk or hike, but will be slow as a snail when trying to get somewhere on time? One of life’s little mysteries, I guess.

I brought a few film cameras with me, but was glad I left the large format 4x5 at home. When you’re traveling with a group of five people who want to see everything in a limited time, there’s just no waiting to set up the tripod, take the camera out of the pack, set it up, check the light meter, focus, insert the film holder, expose, remove the holder and store it, break the whole kit down again and repack. Besides it was so windy, I doubt the camera and its kite-like bellows would have remained steady enough to make a small aperture, long-ish exposure photograph. So the medium format (and hand-held…it was really sunny!) Mamiya 7 sufficed for much of the landscape photos, while the 35mm Leica M2 got a workout as well. In fact, as I take a look at the contact sheets and start printing some of the images, I’m favoring the Leica photos right now. That’s probably because I used the Mamiya for much of the canyon photography, and as one soon finds out, although the canyon is a natural beauty, many of the photos one makes there can all too easily look like the same shot over and over! I used the Leica in Tucson, in Sabino Canyon, to photograph beautiful groves of Saguaro cactus and at the Mission San Xavier, and I’m partial to those at the moment.

One of the funniest moments of our trip came when we decided to try a restaurant in Tusayan called Spaghetti Western. Now, normally I would not go anywhere near a restaurant with a name like this, but you don’t always have a lot of choices when you’re on the road, especially near a tourist attraction. When we walked in we could see that it was all very knotty-pine and western-looking. Posters of Clint Eastwood movies were framed on the walls and the menu featured the usual offerings of a typical red-checked tablecloth Italian eatery. And then a realization…almost all the wait staff and hosts were Chinese…wearing cowboy hats! No one spoke a word of English. Now, I’m not saying this as a comment on immigration or making fun of anyone, just that it made for a comically hilarious juxtaposition here at the grandest and most iconic of American vistas. At one point during dinner, when we asked to see our waiter, they thought we wanted more water and brought us refills, and on and on. When the evening was over and we left the parking lot, I noticed another restaurant down the street about half a block. It was called Yippie-I-O-Ti-Yea or something like that. Hmmm….pull in there, I shouted to my brother-in-law. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I had to check it out. I got out of the car and went inside to “inquire” about reservations for the next day, and…yes!...another complete staff of Chinese! What sort of weird parallel universe had we wandered into? We all had a good laugh over our topsy-turvy evening where we had all felt like we were in another country, one of those fun anecdotes one acquires while traveling, but the next day when we were at the canyon and ordered a few ice cream cones, it took a minute to convince the Chinese counterperson that I wanted two separate cones and not two flavors mixed in one cone.

I knew the US was in financial trouble, but I had no idea…

April 21, 2009 | Link to this entry

Recharge

Well, it’s been a month since I last posted here and it feels like it’s time to start writing again. I took a vacation with my family, driving through Arizona from bottom to top and back again, visiting the Grand Canyon via Tucson, Phoenix, Sedona and Flagstaff. We spent a large part of our time in Tucson, an incredibly beautiful desertscape, staying at my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s home, which faces the Santa Catalina Mountains.

Tucson is also home to the Center for Creative Photography, located on the campus of the University of Arizona. The Center is home to an incredibly huge and rich archive of photographs from well-known past and present photographers. Any member of the public can make an appointment to set up a private viewing of several portfolios of their choice. Imagine being able to sit down for an hour with an original portfolio of silver gelatin prints by Ansel Adams or Edward Weston!

On the day I visited, the in-house exhibition featured the photographs of Linda Connor. I have a Connor book in my collection and to be able to see the photographs in that book and close to one hundred more was a really special treat. Linda has always worked with an 8x10 view camera (that’s one of those big old-time looking cameras with an expandable bellows). Each sheet of film is 8x10 inches in size. After developing each sheet, she contact prints the negatives in the sun on printing-out paper. In cloudy Rochester, NY and in San Francisco, where she’s lived many years of her life, it has sometimes taken her 3 or 4 days to make an exposure! POP paper, which unfortunately is not available any more, will reveal an image directly without developing after exposure. She then tones her prints with a solution of gold-chloride, which gives them a beautiful luminosity and a slightly brown-purple color. My brother-in-law and I were captivated for the afternoon. Not only were the prints and the images (two separate things for me!) wonderful, but we were amazed at the fortitude and determination of this woman who lugged this large camera with her to extreme faraway places…valleys in rural India, mosques in Turkey, monasteries in Tibet and Egypt. Every photograph displays a magical light that reveals minute details or adds another layer to the shrouds of mystery in the frame.

In today’s age of digital photography and Photoshop, it’s sometimes hard to remember that photography was always an alchemic art; a combination of eye, tool, material, chemical. Film and its attendant processes, in this case a very alternative process, possesses a magic that is still unsurpassed by more modern technologies, however that magic is only available to those who are willing to work extremely hard to master these processes and in our workaday modern world there are few who can afford this luxury. I’m thankful we have people like Linda Connor to remind us and show the way.

April 20, 2009 | Link to this entry

about

Paul Viapiano

Paul Viapiano is a guitarist working in film, television and live performance based in sunny Pasadena, California.

You can email me here.

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