It wasn’t really that wild. I’m just trying to get your attention. But music arrives in many forms, and last week Hilary and I had the pleasure of listening to good deal of it.
It all started on Friday night. The moon was out, tinted by smoke from the forest fires raging in Manitoba. We were out, too, listening to rock-and-roll on the rooftop terrace of Brookview Community Center in Golden Valley. The event was a repeat of the Hopkins Class Reunion we attended last year, but for a different class. Hilary’s brother, David, was playing in the band again, and he’d gotten us complimentary tickets.
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| Lively and distinguished? |
The venue was classier, the food was slightly better, and the attendees seemed less frenzied, perhaps because of the larger venue and the more ample tables.
Most of the guests stayed inside, where the air was cleaner and it was easier to talk, but we sat out under the stars (only one of which was visible) listening to the music and chatting with spouses and friends of the band members. The band seemed slightly mellower, but also inspired by two new female vocalists. It was a memorable evening all around.
A few nights later Hilary’s other two brothers stopped over
for “jazz night.” We’ve been doing this on a roughly monthly basis for at least
twenty years. Everyone brings a few cuts, we take turns playing them, listening
politely, commenting occasionally. It’s a great way to socialize and also to
learn about new artists and forms of music.
Every month we wrap up the evening with pie. Hilary makes
them, following in the footsteps of her mother, who made the pies and attended faithfully to the
end, though she didn’t much like jazz. “I like the commentary,” she told us. She died
a year ago at 97.
We keep track of the pieces we’re playing, and I type up a
list later and send it around, sometimes manufacturing a “theme” after the fact.
As you can see from our most recent gathering, our devotion to jazz is sincere
but not exclusive:
July 2025: Jazz beyond borders
Jeff / “Tin Roof Blues” / Herb Ellis (guitar) Roy
Eldridge (trumpet), Getz (tenor) in straight-ahead 1957 performance
John / “Remember” / Hank Mobley
(tenor) in1959 update of often recorded 1925 Irving Berlin tune, corny
and sweet. To wit:
"Remember we found a lonely spot
And after I learned to care a lot;
You promised that you’d forget me not
But you forgot to remember"
Hilary / “Fly with the Wind” (1964) mellow Lucky
Thompson (tenor) with nice Hank Jones piano solo
Paul / “Fuzzy” / Laura Jurd (Scotish composer /
trumpet) in an upbeat, party-like New Orleans work w accordion &
guitar
Jeff / “Seattle” Avishnu
Cohen / young Jewish pianist in trio piece from album “Gently
Disturbed”
John / “Ka Ju Mot” / Albanian “folk”
vocalist Elina Duli in slow, haunting piece with Colin Vollan (Swiss pianist)
on ECM
Hilary / “Reminiscence”/ a quieter side of Lucky
Thompson from album “Lucky Strikes”
Paul / “Little Opener” /Laura Jurd, fun explosive arrangement with guitar and button accordion
Jeff / “Ashé” / Aaron Parks (piano) Lyric and emotive jazz
John / “After You’re Gone”/ rich modern harmonies
and cookin’ solos on Nicolas Payton ensemble remake of 1915 tune
Hilary / ”Siboney” / Cuban crooner/ballad from
Los Super Seven album “Canto”
Paul / “Bonito
Y Sabroso” / Cuban pianist Harold Lopez Nossa in live performance
A few days later we drove down to the West End theaters to see a matinee “encore” screening of the Met’s controversial production of Donizetti’s “Lucia de Lammermoor,” set in a nameless American Rust Belt slum rather than a 17th century Scottish court. Donizetti’s music is very fine, but it didn’t jibe very well with the garish, seedy milieu, and several important elements in the plot were all but obliterated in the process of modernizing the story.
I didn’t like it … until I started to like it. The performance was lively, and slightly “cool,” all the ugly tattoos notwithstanding, and the singers were outstanding. Soprano Nadine Serra was spectacular in the title role, even with a bucket of blood splashed across her wedding dress. (She’d just murdered her newly wed husband with a fire extinguisher in a motel room.)
The next morning we headed downtown to see an exhibit of graphic art by Many Sully, a Sioux artist whose work dates mostly from the 30s and 40s. I’m including it in the lineup here because all art is in some sense musical, and because Sully’s work in particular draws upon repeated colors, patterns, and rhythms to achieve it effects.
It’s a small exhibit, tucked into a room at the far end of MIA, but I’m glad we saw it. Most of the pieces consist of three-tiered panels with which Sully “depicted” famous personalities of her era and transformed them into native symbols.
Sully was raised in an aristocratic Sioux family, and she spent much of her adult life in New York City. I was interested to learn that she was related to the scholar Vine deLoria, Jr. When we got home I downloaded deLoria’s book, Spirit and Reason, in which he ridicules the Western philosophical establishment, pokes fun at his publisher, and tries to draw parallels between the Messiah and the Trickster figure who plays such a prominent role in Native American folklore. I can’t say that I fully caught the drift, but it’s definitely a subject worth investigating.
The next afternoon we returned downtown to attend a recital given by the vocal students at the annual Source Song Festival. The young performers had drawn their pieces from the standard romantic repertoire—Schubert, Wolf, Rachmaninov, Debussy, etc.—and I shouldn’t have been surprised to see how many of the lyrics were of the “twittering birds,” “forest glen,” “lost love” variety.
No doubt, the pianists were as skilled as the singers. And if the lyrics sometimes teetering on the edge of schmaltz, one of the baritones redressed the balance by shaking the hall with a boisterous rendition of Charles Ives' "General William Booth Enters into Heaven."
I'll spare you a blow-by-blow of the documentary we watched the next night, devoted to the career of eighteenth-century French composer Jean-Phillippe Rameau. Suffice it to say that music is often in the air--
or on the wall--
Or on the dining room table!
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