Favorite Recordings of 2010

The end of another year approaches. I generally don't have much time to listen to music, but this year, somehow (was it the ipod I bought and ended up jogging and walking to?) I've been able to return to one of my great pleasures.

A gift of music can be, for some of us, one of the best things to receive. An aunt of mine, who knew a lot about rock music, once gave me 3 LP's for Christmas. Music I never would have thought to buy, but that opened me to entirely new musical worlds. One of my favorite presents of all time!

So I'm sharing with you some of my favorite recordings that I've come across this year. Treat yourself or, if a recording seems right for someone you know, give them a treat.
Love, Gunnar.

Tatiana Nikolaeva Shostakovich: 24 Preludes & Fugues. This was a gift this year from a former college roommate and fellow music student of yore. I have never enjoyed Shostakovich - his music is too dense, thick and forbidding somehow. But these? Oh my god, they are lyrical, witty, full of a direct and simple beauty. I may end up searching out some more Shostakovich this coming year...

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs. I came to this unwillingly. Their earlier work was just not to my taste - too sweeping and needlessly grand. They can still tend to that, but this work is much more modulated. And they hit a lovely, vibrant lyric nerve in their exploration of the suburbs. For anyone who ever grew up in the suburbs, this just might speak to you. It did me.

The Band - The Band. "Music from Big Pink" was a tremendous and lovely album. The next record I bought of theirs way back when was "Stage Fright". It was a huge disappointment. So I gave up on exploring their music more, and missed out on this other masterpiece. I happened on it this year when I remembered an LP I'd loved back in high school, "Journey" by John Simon. It faded into obscurity, but I've always remembered itl. The guy could hardly sing in tune, his piano playing is a bit ragged, but he writes marvelous melodies and fantastic arrangements. His lack of perfection and chops gave me the courage to follow my dreams of being a musician, all my imperfections notwithstanding. So, wondering what became of him, I looked him up. Turns out he produced "Music from Big Pink" and "The Band". Well. I gave "The Band" a try this year, and it's great. His own music is still great (you can find it on the web, he put out 2 albums) and he produced 2 fantastic albums for the Band. For real.

Isabelle Faust - Bach: Sonatas & Partitas for solo violin. I have other recordings of solo Bach violin music. It's all very well done, but not LOVELY. This, my friends, is LOVELY. She makes her violin sound so sweet, she takes such time with every line of notes. I just love it.



Alexandre Tharaud - Rameau: "Nouvelles Suites". Baroque music on the piano is something I love. Here is some non-Bach that is very very beautiful, and exquisitely interpreted. Included is Ravel's " Hommage À Rameau [Images, Premier Livre, 1905]". If you like piano music, this is a great one.

Big Star - #1 Record/Radio City. This recording is legendary as being the unluckiest record of all time. Or something like that. Made in the early 70's, the record label just chucked in the wastebasket somehow, and it was forgotten. But it's legend bubbled on over the years, and with the death of one of its masterminds, Alex Chilton, this past year, and with the advent of easy and cheap distribution via the internet, it seems to have finally made its way into the world. If you're one of those people who dream that someone will uncover a hitherto unknown recording by The Beatles or some other majorly classic group, this is for you. It is a true classic. Song after song is fantastic.

Galactic - Ya-Ka-May. I got it for me, but my 8 year old son latched onto it and played it nonstop for months. And I never got tired of it. A way cool blend of hip hop w/New Orleans beats and horns. The drummer is other-worldly, the best groove ever. And the songs are all catchy and well-written and stand the test of time. Note: There are couple songs with naughty words, so if you're child wants to listen, you might want to edit :)

Listening for Grammys

It's the nominating season for the Grammy Awards. In the mailboxes of recording academy members like myself, CDs are arriving in droves, hungry to be considered worthy of nomination in their respective categories. (My own Two Hands is hoping for a New Age Album nod).

In most of the categories, it's a simple matter of popularity. Whoever is the most famous gets the most votes and gets nominated. But in a few categories, such as composing and arranging, the nominations are made by committees who actually listen to each of the entries. That's how the arrangement of "Helter Skelter" by Richard Greene and Yours Truly snagged a nomination. Groups of dedicated and knowledgeable Academy members across the country listen through hundreds of potential nominees, and present their chosen nominations. The Bobs were not a household name, but enough of a name to get a fair hearing - and a Grammy Nomination!

I'm too busy with fatherhood just now to serve on a listening committee, but back in the late 80's I did for a few years, and it was pure pleasure for a listening hound like myself. Not since high school had I had the chance to sit around with others who love music to just listen. Through STACKS of records .For hours and hours. And it was so exciting to hear, and honor with a vote, some little-known composer or arranger whose work, while not famed, shone with inspiration and originality.

Meanwhile, I'm having my own private listening party, checking out all the CDs that are flooding in, finding some nice gems, and happily casting my vote for the good stuff.

Bertolt Brecht and Me...

In 1976, at the beginning of my Junior year of college, I was working at a little desk in the basement of the music department, handing out keys to the practice rooms. A professor of mine, John Swackhamer, came by and plonked a 3-inch high stack of xeroxed music in front of me. He had a glint in his eye (he almost always did), and he explained how this score had been smuggled out of East Germany by a fellow professor. It was the piano/vocal music to the Hans Eisler/Bertolt Brecht play "The Measures Taken". He asked if I had any experience in music theatre. "Um... I was a dancer in my high school production of the Music Man...And I sang the little Nazi's song in Cabaret..." Not a stunning resume. But to him it was as if I'd just said I was Harold Prince. "Excellent! There's a director who's putting on this play, and you'd be perfect as the music director! Call him!"

I called the director, who likewise seemed to have no problem with my lack of experience. So I gathered together a ragtag yet spirited band who taught me how to write for their respective instruments, and a choir of 12 or so. I really had no idea what I was doing. But the play was a huge hit. Shortly after, RG Davis, founder of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, opened a new theatre company, Epic West, the Centre for the Study of Bertolt Brecht. He asked me to be the music director. Big names from East Germany came to collaborate and teach, the productions had lots of great Bay Area actors in the casts, and while I was excited to be in the middle of it, my understanding of it all was pretty limited. (It was amusing to have my parents, longtime conservatives, come to the productions which were noisily marxist and densely intellectual. My parents were wonderfully supportive - My mother found and gave me a rare LP of Lotte Lenya singing)

I began to get work with other theatre companies, but my reputation as a Brechtian expert had been solidified, and I kept getting approached to do Brecht and political theatre. Ina Wittich, a famous (in East Germany) East German interpreter of Brechtian songs, came to California for a tour and needed an accompanist. Eisler songs are technically easy, almost like rock or folk music. Ina croaked them in a Lotte Lenya kind of way. But, for her big concert at Mandeville Hall in UC San Diego, she wanted me to play Eisler's Sonata for Piano. I'm not a fast learner, and his sonata is technically difficult, atonal, and huge. And I only had 10 days to master it. I begged her to let me off the hook, but, and perhaps this was the East German in her, she would not change her mind. Onstage that night, in front of 1,000 or so people, I flailed my way through it, just making up whole sections of atonality when the notes on the page blurred before my eyes. Afterwards, at the wine & cheese function, a UC music professor buttonholed me. He wanted to talk to me about my playing of Eisler's Sonata. The cheese in my mouth went dry. He said "That was the most brilliant interpretation I've heard. It sounded so fresh, so new!" Well, yeah, half that music had never been played before, by me or anyone else.

Is there Brecht/Eisler/Weill in the music I write? I don't claim them as major influences, but years of study and immersion must have left some traces. My predilection for simplicity and directness is something I tend to attribute to my rock and roll roots, but it's a strong element in both Eisler's and Weill's music, and in Brecht's lyrics and drama. Maybe it's a combo of both Marx and Lennon - Yar yar yar.

Edward Albee and I Chat in NY

Edward Albee will moderate while I and all the other creators of dramatic works for Playwrights Horizons will chat. Onstage, with you in the audience tossing questions our way. And we'll enlighten you about the mysteries of the creative process (maybe). I'll probably just mumble occasionally and nod my head sagely. I will try hard not to embarrass myself, even. 7:30pm, Mon Sept 13 at the Tribeca 92nd St. Y.

What do I know of Edward Albee? Well, I knew he was famous as the writer of the huge hit film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", but I was too young to see it (or understand it) when it came out in 1966. Ten years later, when I landed the job of music director for the unapologetically political "Epic West" (The Center for the Study of Bertolt Brecht), Edward Albee's name was often spat with contempt by the people in charge there. Heck, I was young and excited to be in this radical marxist environment (I'd grown up in a Goldwater/John Wayne household), but I didn't quite understand all the fine political distinctions being made. I didn't really understand Brecht. And I'd never even read Albee, so I always wondered what he'd done to get under their skin so much.

Ever since, whenever I hear Albee's name, I'm brought back to that time in my early 20's when I was trying to make sense of the world of Epic West. Their disdain of Albee was pretty silly - their strict Brechtian dogma did not result in very good theater after all (I could show you the reviews...). And the bits of Albee I've read in acting classes in the years since? I rather like them.

I've worked with the Brechtians. It was an interesting introduction to theater. Now it's time to chat with Mr. Albee.

"Two Hands" Rockets to #4 on the Charts - Sale-a-bration!

When "Two Hands" was released last fall, I hired a radio promoter and sent out hundreds of copies to radio stations all over the continent. But the promoter disappeared with my money, and all the CDs I sent out went unopened, unheard, and unloved.

So this summer I hired a promoter who has an actual physical address (note: don't trust P.O. Boxes in the Cayman Islands), and I've sent out another few hundred CDs. This time the results are stunning. Stations around the world are playing it and loving it, and it zoomed to #4 on the New Age charts for the month of July!

In celebration, I'm having a sale calculated to get "Two Hands" into the ears, the minds, and yay, the very playlists of every man and woman who reads these words.

From now to the end of September, you can either download or get the CD version of "Two Hands" for a mere $8. Click Here for downloads, or Here for CDs. It's that simple.

Those of you who have already demonstrated your love of and belief in this beautiful music - I thank you. And I ask, nay, I exhort you to tell all your friends, acquaintances and yes, even your enemies about this music. You'll glow in the feeling that comes from sharing something good.

May autumn leaves pour gold upon you - Gunnar

They say the Neon Lights are Bright...

...On Off-Broadway! It's official, the musical based on the life story of The Shaggs, "The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World", created by Joy Gregory, John Langs and Yours Truly, is headed for a major production that is at the pinnacle of Off-Broadway on fabled 42nd street - at Playwrights' Horizons, the people who brought you "Grey Gardens", "Floyd Collins", and Stephen Sondheim's "Assassins", and" Sunday in the Park with George". Co-producing with them for the first time is the esteemed New York Theatre Workshop, whose productions include "Rent" and "Bright Lights, Big City".

Hoo-boy, I can't wait to invite my mama to this show! But first, I have to finish writing it. Yes, I know, we've been working on it for 9 years, you'd think it would be finished by now, but I'm born to tinker, and there's just a few things that need fixing here and there. It's great, it's good to go, but if I gotta rent a tux to go to the opening night, I want to make sure everything in the show is polished to perfection. As I last wrote to you about this, we were just about to do a reading at Playwrights' Horizons in December. That reading went very well, and showed us places that needed work. We worked those places, and had another fine reading in April, where we found a few more things to work on, and also got a fire lit under a bunch of producers. After a couple months of shaking things out, New York Theatre Workshop came on board to co-produce, and now we're on track to a full production this coming spring.

You can read all about it in the New York Times, or the New York Post, or Playbill, or...

The rumors are all true.

Svetlana Village now on DVD/Download!

In the fall of 2000, I traveled to Russia to make a documentary film about a farm that my brother had been working at for the previous 5 years. A Camphill Village, where half of the residents were disabled. I spent a couple weeks filming, and 10 months writing and editing, and then the film was released to good reviews and success. It was selected for the prestigious Ojai International Film Festival, and was picked up by the venerable Berkeley Fine Arts Theatre for a week long run. It played other film festivals and helped raise money for the Russian farm and village.

The film was also released on VHS (the format of the day), and many copies were sold, and local video stores in Berkeley displayed them proudly in their independent features library. But VHS, and independent theatres, are gone the way of the dinosaurs. We are just now witnessing the eclipse of DVD's and the dawn of downloading.

Svetlana Village: The Camphill Experience in Russia is now available on DVD and via download! Restored to the full digital glory which it was originally captured with! Own a DVD your family will cherish for generations, or instantly download it to your favorite viewing device! All proceeds from downloads and DVD sales go directly to Svetlana Village, so you can watch a good movie and do a good deed at the same time!

I'm still researching how to make the film available for free viewing (YouTube does not allow long films). If anyone has knowledge of places that will show the film online so it can be shared with an even larger audience, please let me know.

I'm Alive!!!

I'm alive, baby. I'm vibrating at ultra-high frequencies, even. Below are 4 reasons why you haven't heard from me lately:

1. Rewrite of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World for another reading at Playwright's Horizons in late April. They're excited about the play, I'm excited about the rewrite, it's a lot of work.

2. Writing music and sound design for a new video game. It's great fun to go back and forth from writing music for a musical to writing music for a horror-genre video game. Variety is the spice of life.

3. The promoter I hired to get "Two Hands" to radio and press ran off with my money and left the project stranded. I'm filing legal papers against her (in case she tries to bamboozle YOU, her name is Kathryn Monohan - be warned!), and meanwhile gearing up to re-issue the CD with a different and much more reputable promoter. It's no small amount of work to launch a recording, and I've got to do it twice :(

4. I'm a stay-at-home dad with a wonderfully intensive boy to tend. I've got my hands full even if 1-3 above were not brewing, you know?

In further news, my 2001 film "Svetlana Village: The Camphill Experience in Russia" is now available on DVD and for download HERE. And, "Two Hands" is one of 5 nominees in the IMA's Vox Pop awards. Please cast your vote for "Two Hands" by rating it on my home page in the IMA widget. Just click on the stars!

I love the recording studio.

I still feel a thrill every time I'm in a recording studio, with the huge consoles full of buttons, the mics, the speakers, the layers of glass between the control room and the recording space. I was pretty stoked my first few times in rather flea-bag 4-track studios, hearing my music with reverb on it, making it sound "just like on records". But I was jaw-droppingly transported when I first was in a top-notch studio (Russian Hill Recording, in San Francisco). The huge 2-inch tape decks, the quiet, the looming mic stands. All the photographs of the Beatles in the studio that I'd studied in my youth - that's what this was like. I'd finally arrived. This was my dream - even more than performing in a concert hall.

For many people, the sense of "this will only happen once, never to be repeated" is what they love about live performance. For me, the same thing is true in the studio. If it's not fresh in the studio, there's no way it will withstand the test of repeated listenings as a recording. You have to stay present, over and over, take after take, delivering the absolute best, liveliest performance you can. And that, to me, is every bit as challenging and exciting as a live performance. Just me and the microphone. And then, when the work is done, it's preserved forever, to be enjoyed over and over. I LOVE that.

Of course, there is no audience in the studio, no sense of love and reciprocity, no implied challenge of winning them over, no applause. So live performance does have some powerful and unique aspects that the studio can't deliver. I can dig that..

But, as in many areas of my life, I can get tired of doing the same thing on a routine basis. Performing in a long run of a play, or singing the same songs night after night... sometimes boredom starts to edge in. I know how to look for the ways of keeping a performance fresh and alive over the long haul (heck, I sang Psycho Killer over a thousand times, and rarely did it ever get stale for me.) But I tend to itch, yearning to move on. In the same vein, I've never been able to stay in a job for long. It's how I'm built.

Being in front of a microphone and exploring the moment and knowing that whatever I do will be captured is an ultimate high for me. And...when the work is done, I get to move on to something new. That's nice!