River of Progress

Like a great many people I know, I woke up yesterday morning with the heaviest of hearts.  It was easy in the post-election haze of shock and awe to feel depressed and defeated.  Even the journalists on every news network I watched Tuesday night (and I checked in with all the major networks across the spectrum) seemed somewhat bewildered, confused, and...well...low-energy, to say the least.

It's an extraordinary thing that America chose to elect a man who received no endorsement from any living former president nor any major news publication...a man who was endorsed by the KKK.  It's an incredible thing that America chose to elect a man with absolutely no political experience who unleashed and rode a tidal wave of misogyny, bigotry, and xenophobia to our nation's highest office.

In the wake of that, when viewing it from that perspective, it's easy to feel disgusted, despondent, depressed and like one wants to give up.  I understand that the Canadian immigration website crashed under the deluge of traffic it received Tuesday night, and scrolling through my Facebook feed yesterday morning was like a visual depiction of grief and all its stages - most prevalently anger.

During the administration of President George W. Bush, many Americans with whom I was close (including my partner at the time) were desperate to ex-patriate to Europe, where life seemed better and people seemed more accepting.  I believe the Canadian immigration website was getting a lot of traffic back then, as well.  Yet I never, ever had this inclination, despite the fact that I was frequently working in Europe for extended periods back then.  I was adamant about staying in the US, and proudly being an American despite the jokes that I should pretend to be a Canadian citizen during my foreign travels.

I believe that America is beautiful, and I am proud that it is my home.  Not only is it a stunningly beautiful country in its landscape and natural wonders, but it is a country founded by a handful of visionary geniuses (who were riddled with all the flawed trappings of human genius) on the principle of Freedom.  Part of the beauty of that freedom is that our wonderful land is a place where truly all voices can be heard - most importantly those of dissent.  We witnessed the humbling power of that beauty yesterday, when a strong and vocal minority of the electorate raised their voices of dissent and swept a terrifying, seemingly despotic man whom they felt represents their ideals into power for at least the next 4 years.

The river of progress is a winding one that, just like rivers in nature, sometimes winds back upon itself.  In a strange twist of history, a vestigial institution of a time when our founding fathers felt that both one's genitalia and the color of one's skin determined suffrage was the quirk of our voting system that empowered this minority of voters.  The Electoral College, which was established in lieu of a direct, popular vote as a compromise to appease the slave-owners of the South, empowered a minority voice of dissent against the future legacy of our first black president and the possibility for a woman to finally break the ultimate glass ceiling in America.

I think that it is important to remember that while rivers may wind back on themselves occasionally, and sometimes narrow almost to streams, they always continue to flow.  The analogy makes me think of yet another beautiful, American creation: Charles Ives' setting of Robert Underwood Johnson's poem The Housatonic at Stockbridge.  The river of progress is, like the Housatonic of Johnson's poem, sometimes "overshy" and sometimes "masks its beauty from the eager eye".  But I do believe it will continue to carry us ever onward, and that this week's shocking result is just a "restive ripple" which encourages a "faster drift". I hope it is a wake-up call for us to try to extricate ourselves from our liberal echo chamber and truly hear this voice of dissent, as Michael Moore was encouraging us to do back in July.  I, like the narrator in the poem, "also of much resting have a fear", and I look forward to following this river "to the adventurous sea" that lies beyond, no matter how seemingly meandering its path.

We must remember that we are the voice of the majority of the popular vote that chose progress.  As a result, no matter who is our president, progress was made, and progress will continue.  Perhaps taking confidence in that, we can continue to appreciate the terrifying beauty of our right to Freedom of Speech and listen to these voices of dissent with a bit of compassion, hopefully enabling us all to find a path forward...together. 

Charles Ives
The Housatonic at Stockbridge

TEXT (Robert Underwood Johnson)


Contented river! In thy dreamy realm
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:
Thou beautiful!
From ev'ry dreamy hill
what eye but wanders with thee at thy will,
Contented river!
And yet over-shy 
To mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown
Ah! there's a restive ripple,
And the swift red leaves
September's firstlings faster drift;
Wouldst thou away, dear stream?
Come, whisper near! 
I also of much resting have a fear:
Let me tomorrow thy companion be, 
By fall and shallow to the adventurous sea!

CREDITS
Nicholas Phan, tenor
Robert Mollicone, piano

recorded LIVE at SF Performances Salons at the Rex, January 28, 2016

Executive Producers: Nicholas Phan, Philip Wilder

SOUND:
Producer / Recording Engineer: Lolly Lewis
Recording assistant: Emma Logan
Mastering / Mixing: Piper Payne, Coast Mastering

VIDEO:
Cinematography: Catharine Axley, Kristine Stolakis
Editor: Catharine Axley

This project is a fiscally sponsored project of FRACTURED ATLAS.
To find our more information and to make a TAX-DEDUCTIBLE 
donation to support the continuation of this project please visit:
https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=10592

By Turning We Come Round Right

This being a presidential election season, I took up some American songs this past year, performing and curating American-themed programs in Chicago, Washington DC, Istanbul and San Francisco this past year.  The theme I chose for many of these concerts, specifically those in Chicago and San Francisco, was something I loosely titled, American Spirit, focusing in on the American pre-occupation with faith and spirituality.

When thinking about the United States’ beginnings, we often think of the Pilgrims, whose famous meal with the Native Americans they encountered upon landing here we attempt to recreate every year at Thanksgiving. These pilgrims represent the two basic principles upon which the United States’ foundation is based: the search for both economic and religious freedom.  Ever since, Americans have been pre-occupied with their relationship to a higher power - whether it be the New England Transcendentalists seeking God in Nature, Joseph Smith translating the golden plates of the angel Moroni and founding the Mormon Church, or the political rise of the religious right.  I, myself, in true San Franciscan 'spiritual' fashion own no fewer than three yoga mats.

While faith and religion have played a fundamental part in the evolution of American identity, American composers have developed a distinctly unique relationship with these topics in contrast with their European counterparts.

What we now generally define as ‘Classical Music’ has its roots in the religions of Europe. Its earliest forms were composed specifically to augment religious rites, and eventually evolved into integral parts of worship. When we think of the great European composers, much of the music that deals with the topics of faith and religion is composed in a religious context—the many masses, cantatas, magnificats, te deums, requiem and passion settings that we know and love today. While there are, of course, exceptions to this generalization (Handel’s oratorios, for instance, which were composed as a practical and more economic replacement for the London opera productions that were becoming increasingly too expensive for him to mount), most of these pieces were composed for specific religious services and intended to be performed as part of the worship service. 

In contrast, much of the music written by American classical composers that deals with faith and spirituality has been written in a distinctly secular context. Even Bernstein’s Mass is a theater piece, juxtaposing the formal ritual of the Mass with texts by Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz that challenge the religious teaching of the mass. The American composer generally only encounters this subject in the form of an artistic meditation on faith and belief, in a way that in recent years has become in fashion to call ‘spiritual’. These American Spirit programs explored some of these meditations.

The concept of what it is to be an American has loomed in my mind ever since having the honor to represent the United States at the BBC Singer of the World competition back in 2003.  The competition is a sort of vocal olympics, and walking into the lobby of my hotel in Cardiff, seeing the American flag hanging amongst the other flags of the other countries represented that year was the first time I really had ever considered what it was to be a representative of the United States and to be an American.  As the bi-racial child of an immigrant who grew up in the very white and black midwest, I had always felt a bit of an outsider in America.  Yet it was in that moment that I realized I am very much a part of the history of the great American cultural melting pot.  I've considered the many facets of what that means ever since, and performing these programs over the last year has been a wonderful deepening of that epiphany that I experienced so many years ago in Wales.

As we push through this final week of this wretched election cycle, I leave you with one of the songs we performed at the Hotel Rex for San Francisco Performances back in January: Aaron Copland's beautiful arrangement of the Shaker tune, Simple Gifts.  The words from the middle section of the song take on a different meaning for me now, after all the baseness and drama of the past few months of this fraught presidential contest: "To turn, turn will be our delight, and by turning, turning, we come round right." After all of the spinning we've been through as these campaigns have waged their wars against each other, I do hope that next Tuesday, we do actually come round right, so that we can, as the song says, "find ourselves in that place just right...to be in the valley of love and delight."

arranged by Aaron Copland
Simple Gifts from 'Old American Songs'

TEXT (Shaker Folk Song):

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free
'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place just right
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed
To turn, turn will be our delight
'Till by turning, turning we come round right.

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free
'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place just right
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

CREDITS

Nicholas Phan, tenor

Robert Mollicone, piano
recorded LIVE at SF Performances Salons at the Rex, January 28, 2016

Executive Producers: Nicholas Phan, Philip Wilder

SOUND:
Producer / Recording Engineer: Lolly Lewis
Recording assistant: Emma Logan
Mastering / Mixing: Piper Payne, Coast Mastering

VIDEO:
Cinematography: Catharine Axley, Kristine Stolakis
Editor: Catharine Axley

This project is a fiscally sponsored project of FRACTURED ATLAS.

To find our more information and to make a TAX-DEDUCTIBLE 
donation to support the continuation of this project please visit:
https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=10592

The Things our Fathers Loved

One of the other recording projects I'm currently working on is producing art song and vocal chamber music content specifically for YouTube.  The initial material that was recorded for the first stage of this project is from a salon concert I gave as the resident artist for San Francisco Performances earlier this January.  As tonight's final presidential debate looms, the subject matter of the program we recorded feels very timely.  The program was built from CAIC's 2015 Collaborative Works Festival, which explored America's relationship to faith and spirituality through music.

That evening in January, we began the program with some songs by Charles Ives, a visionary composer whose music still sounds so fresh and current today, despite the fact that it was written 100 years ago.  A true patriot whose music is steeped in the history of New England and the United States, one of his signature techniques was his ability to conjure up nostalgia and memory by creating aural snapshots of the past.  He did this by employing a pastiche technique, incorporating quotes from a number of popular tunes and hymns, seamlessly weaving them together, creating something that sounds entirely new and remarkably unique and individual.

In his short, 105-second song, The Things our Fathers Loved (a setting of one of his own texts), there are countless numbers of popular American tunes and hymns quoted, including Battle Cry of Freedom, Dixie, and Come Thou Font of Every Blessing, just to name a few.  The song weaves all of these tunes together quite elegantly at first, creating a sense of wistfulness for a golden age past.  Gradually, though, the tunes begin to collide with one another, and the voice and piano start to drift in different directions tonally, creating a slight sense of chaos and cacophony.  It is as if the present moment, being the sum of all things past leading up to now, is a bit of a messy jumble, the simplicity of yesteryear a distant memory.  The song ends beautifully, but in a quite unresolved way.  The story is unfinished, the future is both uncertain and unwritten.

Looking ahead to this evening's debate and considering just how acrimonious, sensationalist and low-brow this whole presidential election cycle has been, Ives' song about the continuing clash of the conflicting forces of American history (the song begins with a quote from the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy and then quotes a popular Union tune just 12 measures later!) feels eerily prescient.  It's almost as if he understood the timeline and progress of American history and politics as one of continual conflict, with the hope for growth through some sort of resolution of these opposing forces.  The sense of panic and instability he creates at the song's climax where the piano and voice are in very different tonal worlds, with no seeming relation to each other and both at a dynamically loud peak, feels not unlike the mood right now when thinking about the dirty mud-slinging and ideological conflict that pervades American politics today, in which presidential candidates can't bring themselves to be good enough sports to, at the very least, shake hands at the beginning of a debate.

Charles Ives
The Things Our Fathers Loved

TEXT (Charles Ives)

I think there must be a place in the soul
all made of tunes, of tunes of long ago;
I hear the organ on the Main Street corner,
Aunt Sarah humming Gospels; Summer evenings,
The village cornet band, playing in the square.
The town's Red, White and Blue,
all Red, White and Blue; Now! Hear the words
But they sing in my soul of the things our Fathers loved.

CREDITS

Nicholas Phan, tenor

Robert Mollicone, piano

recorded LIVE at SF Performances Salons at the Rex, January 28, 2016

Executive Producers: Nicholas Phan, Philip Wilder

SOUND:
Producer / Recording Engineer: Lolly Lewis
Recording assistant: Emma Logan
Mastering / Mixing: Piper Payne, Coast Mastering

VIDEO:
Cinematography: Catharine Axley, Kristine Stolakis
Editor: Catharine Axley

This project is a fiscally sponsored project of FRACTURED ATLAS.
To find our more information and to make a TAX-DEDUCTIBLE 
donation to support the continuation of this project please visit:
https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=10592

Pink Elephants

A week from tonight, I'll be performing with guitarist, Eliot Fisk, with Da Camera of Houston. The program is comprised of music performed by Sir Peter Pears and the famed guitarist, Julian Bream - who accompanied Pears with increasing frequency towards the end of Britten's life, the period when Britten wasn't anymore able to accompany Pears in recital due to the deterioration of his right hand after undergoing heart surgery in 1973.

Bream and Pears

The program opens with a song that I initially thought was just a simple silly song, but has over the past couple of months given me pause.  As I've studied it in preparation for our concert next week, I've found myself pondering the song much more than I ever thought it would, because of it's strange and uncharacteristic (for Britten) message.  The song, the opening song of Britten's cycle for tenor and guitar, Songs from the Chinese, is a strange call to ignore the cares of the world - an admonition to keep one's head down, and remain detached.

The Big Chariot 

Don't help - on the big chariot;

You will only make yourself dusty.

Don't think about the sorrows of the world;

You will only make yourself wretched.

Don't help - on the big chariot;

You won't be able to see for dust.

Don't think about the sorrows of the world;

Or you will never escape from your despair.

Don't help - on the big chariot;

You'll be stifled with dust.

Don't think about the sorrows of the world;

You will only load yourself with care.

While I can see Britten's attraction to the poem as a warning to protect one's innocence (and therefore one's unsullied, naïve happiness), the admonition to not think about the "sorrows of the world" strikes me as a strange one to draw the attention of someone like Britten, who was very much aware and conscious of the sorrows of the world around him.  A staunch pacifist and deeply thoughtful man, his work centered on so many socially-conscious themes, including the plight of the societal outcast and the futility and waste of war.  When thinking about the song in that context, there's something about the choice of the poem that strikes me as strange.

Mentioning this to Eliot yesterday in rehearsal, I also noted that the song is very much like the proverbial admonition to not think about the pink elephant in the room.  Each time I've come to study and practice it, I find myself thinking of nothing BUT the sorrows of the world. Whether they be the recent horrible terrorist attacks in Paris, the beheadings by ISIS in the middle east, or even the quadruple homicide that occurred the other night, just blocks away, while I was onstage performing Les Illuminations with the San Francisco Symphony (parade sauvage, indeed...) - I find myself pondering nothing but the world's woes as I sing it.

Perhaps this is part of what drew Britten to the poem in the first place?  Perhaps it appealed to him on multiple levels? The effort to protect fragile innocence?  The futility of that effort? Or perhaps he had simply come to think it actually was good advice, the world a no less dangerous, volatile, and threatening place than any previous era in human history?  I'm not sure.

Either way, I can't stop thinking about the pink elephant in the room.

Hear Ian Bostridge and Xufei Yang perform the piece below: