A friend recently played a piece of music for me and I went wild. I asked to hear it over and over. Afterwards, he calmly told me, "When I played that for you three years ago, you dismissed it." Sound familiar?
I could write a book about it, Margaret. Just be grateful your friend had enough faith to try it on you again. That friend knows the importance of context when it comes to sharing music.
A little girl was singing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" recently in my neighborhood public park. I was hanging from the jungle gym, because that's a good thing to do on a Sunday. Especially at the end of a jog on a perfect fall day, a jungle gym is both decompression station and observation deck. The little girl was on the swing set below, alone, singing confidently. The verses she made up were predictably priceless.
"Butter watch out, y' butter not cry, buttermilk powder telling you why." She must have been all of 6 years old. Just as I was worrying where the parents might be, I heard her guardians approaching. Two older brothers, finishing their tag football game, were heading back to pick up sis. Their faces betrayed duty and resentment. "It's not Christmas yet, doofus!" The girl looked up. "So?" The 9-year-olds, showing that craggy world-weariness that accompanies the burden of total knowledge, rolled their eyes in tandem. "It's not even Thanksgiving. And you're singing a Christmas song. What are you, retarded?"
The girl considered this for a second. She shrugged, resumed her swinging and continued in ever more enlightened verses, but stronger-voiced this time: "He's making a list, and mailing it twice, he's gonna find out who's rolling the dice," etc.
That's when the brothers looked up and noticed me smiling ear to ear. They searched my face for a conspiratorial eye roll. I gave them nothing.*
Someday, one or both or those brothers will hear that tune, and when their stomach feels cold, or there's a pressure behind their eyes, they won't understand why. And the tune will stick in a new way.
As we start Christmas music on KING FM the day after Thanksgiving, I'm reminded that "the right time" is a roll of the dice for you. All we can do is create the context. The dice tell this: at some point, your number will come up, and you'll be moved by a tune you never would have considered.
Context breakers coming to Seattle, and we'll be there:
You're a hard rocker in a nightclub, say, and this classical cellist is the act that night. What? He's playing Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, but also Bach, and even more strangely, some Transylvanian gobbledygook that sounds like the angriest, hippest, saddest, most ... poignant music you never thought you'd like. You're in. You just "got" Bartók. You've seen Matt Haimovitz, "maybe the coolest cellist of our time" according to the Boston Herald. A decade ago, forsaking Carnegie Hall for a nationwide tour of punk, country and rock clubs was radical. He wants you to hear this music in a new context. How about a stage that has welcomed the Asylum Street Spankers, Dead Moon and the Drive-By Truckers?
Matt Haimovitz plays The Tractor Tavern (http://tractortavern.ypguides.net/) on Nov. 15, and KING FM will be there! Matt will be playing from his new CD, "After Reading Shakespeare," which features literary-themed solo cello suites by three Pulitzer Prize-winning American composers. Texts are by Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Rambo/Rimbaud. What's that? Yes, some crazy composer has fun pitting Rambo's yang against Rimbaud's yin. I laughed when I dug deeper: that composer is a former teacher of mine. Small world! In any case, Matt Haimovitz will warm up at Seattle's Borders Books and Music on Nov. 14. Come on down and see if I can survive a round without a microphone: I've been asked to do the Shakespeare reading part! Here is your link for more about "After Reading Shakespeare."
The four Juilliard-trained musicians of the Chiara String Quartet have a similar plan. Their warm-up? A stunning program at the UW World Series. Then it's "Chamber music in any chamber," amid the rural paraphernalia hung from the walls of the Tractor Tavern Nov. 28. Again, we'll be there, eager to meet you.
Sean MacLean can be heard weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. on king.org and 98.1 KING-FM. Send your questions to SeanM@King.org
Read earlier articles by Sean MacLean by clicking here.
*Not in my interest. After all, He's making a list, and checking it twice; he's gonna find out who's naughty and nice.
