New York Architecture

When I tell people that we live in Vancouver, the usual response involves saying something about Vancouver being a beautiful city.   Which is not exactly true; Vancouver is a city with mostly bland, mediocre architecture, located in an extremely beautiful environment, with beaches, mountains and water.      People also say that Paris is a beautiful city;  what they are talking about is the grand vistas and famous architectural landmarks such as Notre Dame, as well as the stylistic unity of the majority of the buildings.   I have never heard anyone say "New York, what a beautiful city!"    I actually think, by some measures, New York is a beautiful city.  In terms of streetscapes and architectural variety, New York is remarkably varied and beautiful, but in a heterogenous way.  Pockets of extraordinary architecture mix with areas of ugly, modern glass and concrete boxes.  And the ubiquitous Manhattan grid somehow makes everything seem utilitarian; grand vistas of the grid?  Maybe.    And there is all the noise and constant human activity. But if you walk around almost any area of New York, you can find all kinds of beautiful and interesting architecture, with an astonishing variety of influences and styles.

Evidence:

The facade of the Metro Theater on Broadway near us (under renovation):

Some townhouses and buildings near us:

More...

The brickwork on this building is of a technique called "diapering"

Adventures in Dog Transportation

As our time in NY wraps up, it was time to send Maggie back to Vancouver.  This turned out to be an exhausting enterprise.  I thought she would go back the way she came, via Cathay Pacific, a direct flight.   I spent many hours on email and phone with them.  They wanted a certified letter from a vet specifying that Maggie was not a snub-nosed terrier, even before I could make a booking.  When I finally made the booking, they told me that the fee would be over $600, more than twice what we paid to get her here, and that they would need to be paid in cash...   Something is very suspicious there; a major corporation like Cathay Pacific does not normally require cash.   For Google searches, here is the phrase "Cathay Pacific Ripoff".  ( I have noticed that after a few days, whatever I put in this blog will show up on a google search..)

So we went with United, which meant that I had to take Maggie to Newark airport at 4:30 AM, and that she had to take two planes.  So there I am, walking Maggie on Broadway at 4 AM, for her pre-flight exercise.   Then the car service driver was somehow out of it; he took a completely roundabout way to get to the Lincoln Tunnel, and almost got lost when there was a detour in the Meadowlands.  If I hadn't pointed out the correct direction to him, we might still be somewhere in Secaucus.  When your driver is using GPS to get you from New York to Newark Airport, you know you are in trouble.
So after Maggie was finally settled,  I took the bus back to Manhattan, landing on 42nd Street at 6:30 AM.  (Unfortunately, the antique bus lacked a suspension; a bone-rattling journey.)  That's something I have never seen before, Times Square just before sunrise.  I don't plan on seeing it again.

The adventures were not over, yet.   Maggie was flying to Denver, and then was to be put on a flight from Denver to Vancouver.  The flight from Denver to Vancouver was 3 and a half hours late leaving; we had no idea how she spent the total of almost 6 and a half hours in Denver.   Then we called to confirm her arrival details, and the people in Vancouver told us there was no dog on the plane; we called the tracking center, and they had no clue as to where she was.  Panic time!   Eventually, things got sorted out, and it turns out she was on the plane.   Ada and Andrew finally retrieved her, she seemed in fine shape, and we were all relieved!

Maggie, back at home after 18 hours on the road...

The Artful Recluse

I went to see an exhibit at the Asia Society called "The Artful Recluse".  The subject was Chines art in the mid 17th century, after the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the invasion by the "barbarian" Manchus.   Artists retreated from the chaos of regime change to the countryside, and concentrated on landscapes and otherworldly thoughts.  

What intrigued me most in the exhibit were the scroll paintings; more precisely, images painted on very long rolled up pieces of scroll paper.  You can't actually look at these in a single focus; you need to actually move your eye to see the whole thing.  (Though actually, the whole thing is not usually visible; usually only about 10 feet or so is shown at the most.)   Needless to say, you can't easily find an image that would fit on your computer screen.  The scenes themselves are impossible in some ways; like a widescreen panorama that makes sense from moment to moment, but represents something which could not possibly exist in reality.   (Like the long panning shot at the beginning of Peter Greenaway's film of the Tempest.)   No pictures to be found...

Eliogabalo

Last night we went to see a production of the opera "Eliogabalo", an opera composed in the mid 17th century by Cavalli.  The production had a novelty component; it was being presented in a very small Lower East Side nightclub/burlesque theater/strip club called "The Box", where the shows normally start at 1 AM.  Having seen opera productions with scenes updated to be set in a strip club, we were now going to see an opera in an actual strip club.  The problem was that the only tickets available were either in seats at tables for $175, or standing room for $50.  We went for the standing room, assuming that we would manage somehow.  The problem was that the standing room was at the bar, which was mostly separate from the room where the opera was, with only a partial view of the stage, and the only sound was through some poor quality speakers!   Not to mention the sound of drinks being mixed, etc.  Needless to say this was worthless, and after about 15 minutes we decided to leave.   The opera and its staging received good reviews in the Times, and would have been interesting from the seats.   We talked to the producer, though, and he was extremely apologetic; he promptly refunded our money, and offered us free tickets to their next production.   So it was a major disappointment, but kudos to the producer for being so quick to make amends.


Note the musicians hidden in the back...

From the Canyons To the Stars

Tonight we heard an evening length piece for chamber orchestra and 4 soloists, Olivier Messiaen's "From the Canyons to the Stars"  (OK, it sounds better in French).    My musical brain has had its cells rearranged; this is a truly amazing piece.  Commissioned for the American Bicentennial, it is based on Messiaen's experiences Bryce Canyon in Utah.  For those that haven't heard his Messiaen's music, he was both a Catholic mystic and a man obsessed by birds.   I actually heard the world premiere of this piece almost forty years ago; and have always remembered the experience.    Messiaen composes as if no other music had ever been written before, in a style that really is his own (though birds should share some of the credit).  Much of the music is based on his interpretation of birdsong; in the score, every other  measure contains a note labeling the particular bird the music derives from. Like being in forest (or a canyon), musical events just happen one after another. Though I am sure there is some fairly systematic logic going on, I don't really hear it.  There is no development in the traditional sense.  There are virtually no regular pulses; the meter shifts on almost every measure.  You can't really listen to this in any traditional way; eventually your ears adjust, and you begin to hear differently.

  This 90 minute piece is scored for a chamber orchestra that includes 7 percussionists; and requires extraordinary virtuosity on the part of all the players.  The percussion includes a instrument that Messiaen invented.   In this case, Robert Spano was conducting an orchestra of young musicians.   They were amazingly good.  I can't imagine how many hours they rehearsed.  It was a great evening.

I saw the Metropolitan Opera's director, Peter Gelb, in the audience.  I unfortunately resisted the temptation to tell him that they should do Messiaen's opera, "St. Francis of Assissi". But maybe he's thinking about it?

Messiaen in Bryce Canyon:

Schubert G Major Quartet

I have been eager to hear a string quartet for a while, and the perfect opportunity came along with the recital by the Artemis Quartet at Zankel Hall, playing a concert of Mendelssohn's F Minor Quartet, Ginastera's String Quartet #2, and Schubert's Quartet #15 in G major.   While I have not heard of the Berlin based Artemis Quartet before, they turned out to be an amazingly good ensemble; one of the best string quartets I have heard.  The performance of the Schubert G major quartet was a revelation; the quartet is demanding in its exposed details and ensemble coordination.  I remember when I first heard recordings of the Schubert, and I was searching for an ensemble that could play the high notes in tune.   These guys can; the performance was flawless, among other things. The level of ensemble playing in this group is phenomenal; they play standing up (cellist excepted!), and are constantly listening to each other.  It is almost hard to believe that an ensemble can play this well; I want to be reincarnated as a member of this group.

The Schubert quartet is one of those late Schubert pieces that show him heading in new and strange directions, with the depth of late Beethoven, but inhabiting a very different musical planet.  It doesn't develop like Beethoven, but it does something else which it will take me a long time to understand.   It feels symphonic at times, and, at other times, especially in this performance, it has Feldman-like moments of stillness and inaudibility.  A performance I will long remember and cherish...

The Ginastera quartet, dating from 1958, was Bartok-like in some ways, especially in the pulsating rhythmic movements and in the "night music" movement.   It also sounds somewhat serial at points.  The Artemis gave it an impassioned, ferocious reading, and it was a pleasure to hear.

This was also my first trip to Zankel Hall, which is underneath Carnegie Hall.  It was carved out of the space occupied by the old Carnegie Hall Cinema, with addtitional blasting into the Manhattan bedrock.   (I remember seeing many a Bergman double feature there back in the 1970's!)   It is a nicely configured space with lots of wood, but, to my ears, a little too dry for chamber music.   But kind of a strange feeling to be so far underground.

Maggie stops traffic

Maggie (our dog) tends to attract attention in New York (perhaps as part of her repertoire of food gathering skills), and I frequently get either a smile or a "What a cute dog!" when we are walking down Broadway.  Today, however, we were coming from our walk, crossing the street, when a city bus driver stopped his bus, rolled down his window, and shouted out "What a nice dog!"   She never gets that in Vancouver.   She is going to miss New York.

Note:  I just talked to our friend Leo, who often walks his dog. Someone came up to him, admired his dog, and he was so flattered that he didn't notice that his cellphone was being stolen.  

Maggie guarding New York, with assistance.

Matisse and others at the Met

I finally got around to seeing the Matisse show at the Met, gathering my courage to deal with the crowds.  It is indeed a fascinating show, one that you look at in a very different way.   Because the subject is multiple versions of the same scene or subject, you look at a set of paintings, usually two or three, rather than at just one painting.  Or, at least, you are looking at a painting with the awareness of the different version of the subject which is next to you.   In the early paintings, for example, you see a still life, painted in either a Signac version or a Cezanne version.  But later, it becomes more interesting, as you see Matisse refining his ideas, so that he does one painting, and then does another one on the same subject; the process usually involves removing details.   Here is one of successive versions of the view from his studio towards Notre Dame:

(The one in the middle is in fact the latest one.)

Is this like a musical theme and variations?   I don't know.  But it is an interesting concept;  why should anyone make a definitive version of a scene.  Why not make multiple versions (assuming the artist can afford the canvas and paint; if they couldn't, they would be more likely to paint over the earlier version.)

I liked these two versions of a Cezanne-like still life:

        I also saw a video, which is the kind of thing that you don't normally see at the Met.  It is a work called "Street", by James Nares.  It is a video taken from a camera mounted on a vehicle cruising through the streets of New York, focusing on people walking on sidewalks.  It was shot with a very special high-speed camera, which allowed Nares to slow the footage down to very slow speed without any of the normal problems with blurring in slow motion.   (You can rent this camera for $3,000 a day.)  It is accompanied by some guitar strumming by Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth), which increases the hypnotic effect, but doesn't do much and becomes tiresome after a while.
What struck me on watching this was this it was a kind of art version of Google's street view still cameras.  But on Google, of course, all the faces are blurred, out of concerns for privacy.   But not here.   I wondered how the people videoed,whose images are now appearing live at the Met, feel about being photographed.  I did some research on this, and it is considered legal to photograph and display images of people without their permission if they appear in a public space.  The exception would be if the images are used for "commercial" purposes, commercial purposes being the implied endorsement of something.  Interesting...

Grand Central Station

I have been hanging out at Grand Central Station lately.   It is truly an extraordinary space, and one of the wonders of New York.  A testament to the importance of early 20th century train travel, it makes you want to take a train in the same way that a Gothic cathedral tries to convince you to believe in God.   It is immaculately restored, so much so that it almost doesn't seem authentic, but rather a 21st century facsimile.   I love the sound of the cavernous space, and I enjoy watching the crowds of people negotiating the space, some standing, and some proceeding with determined direction. There is also something very special about such a unique space which anyone is free to come and and enjoy, and which also functions as a utilitarian train station.   In New York, I normally have used Penn Station to go to either New Jersey or Long Island; Penn Station being one of the truly terrible public spaces in New York.

A few photos:

Why a Duck?

On Saturday I took a long walk, starting in Hamilton Heights (where there are Canadian pianists around..)  and then walking through what is called Manhattanville.   The main thing I wanted to see was the famous Riverside Drive Viaduct, which spans the valley between 123rd Street and 135th Street.  There is also a wonderful subway viaduct, as the IRT line emerges from underground to cross the valley.   The area is also now a subject of controversy, as Columbia University is expanding and constructing a very large new campus in this area, and has demolished a lot of the old buildings in the area.  The viaduct dates from 1900, and considered a major work of engineering at the time.
Some pictures:

The Columbia construction site has some interesting colors which attracted my eye:

I don't want to know what these yellow tubes are for:

An example of the subway viaduct, nicely painted:

And finally, one of the old buildings which will most likely be torn down:

It was a sunny day and a great walk..


Note:  The title of this post comes from a famous Chico Marx interpretation of the word "viaduct"....

Park Avenue Art Show

There are three big art shows in town this week.   These are basically shows with a large number of art galleries exhibiting in a convention-style space, with each gallery having its own exhibition space.   The purpose, of course, is to sell art.   But going is a fascinating experience, as you walk from booth to booth, never knowing what to expect. There is a lot of high end schmoozing going on, as dealers cultivate their customers.  I saw the show in the Park Avenue Armory, and I saw many things that I liked, some by people I had heard of, and others I had never heard of.   For the most part, the aesthetic is about things that rich people would want to buy and hang on their walls, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

A few things that caught my eye, mostly captured via my phone camera.

A stunning Schoenberg painting, entitled "Vision", painted in 1923:

Very entertaining repainting of New York Times front pages by Fred Tomaselli:

Three dimensional works created by Kelly Heaton out bits and pieces of circuitry:
(detail)

A recreation of the facade of a famous building near the Gare Montparnasse:
(detail):

A clay model of a mixed-up game board  (even the cards are made of clay)

And much more...including drawings by Klimt and Schiele, and a lot of interesting American modernists from the 1930's.

Tero Saarinen

Vera was in the mood for seeing dance, so we went to see the Tero Saarinen Company, a modern dance company from Finland that was appearing at the Joyce Theater.  ( I remember going there to see movies there in the 1970's.)  There were two pieces.  The first was a kind of generic modern Europe dance piece, with a collage-type sound track with lots of repetitive, beat-heavy sounds, and an excess of reverb that sounds very cool for about 2 minutes and then wears out its welcome.   Reverb is like salt; everyone wants a little bit of it, but too much is catastrophic.   There were six dancers, and some kind of story about contemporary relationships.   Lots of high tech lights and dry ice... and not much variety in movement.
The second piece was much more interesting, it was a solo danced to a complete recording of Stravinky's "Rite of Spring".   Stravinsky's music is so powerful that it is notoriously hard to choreograph; Pina Bausch's version is about the only successful one of have ever seen.   Saarinen's piece begins in darkness, and he moves extremely slowly, even as the music becomes more and more frantic.  Saarinen's solution, ultimately, is to kind of dance against the score;  when the sacrificial dance begins at the end, he stops moving entirely as a video is projected against his body and the very large sort of skirt he is wearing.   There are stunning effects with strobe lights at the end, so that as the music reaches its climax, what we see are occasional strobe flashes illuminating the dancer, and mostly darkness.  It was a provocative and contrary version of the Rite.   Unfortunately, hearing a recording of the Rite blasted at high volume on served to bring back memories of the extraordinary live performance we heard with Alan Gilbert conducting the NY Phil last fall, and the recording cannot compare.

The skirt:

With video projections:

A Very Short Concert

We went to hear a concert at MOMA, staged in association with the exhibit "Inventing Abstraction" and curated by David Lang of Bang On a Can.   I went because I wanted to hear a very rare Schoenberg piece "Herzgewächse" which I have never heard performed. The piece is scored for soprano, harmonium, celesta, and harp.  Unfortunately, Lang's idea of an interesting concert to connect with this exhibit was to perform the 4 minute Schoenberg piece and a 50 minute Morton Feldman piece for solo voice and pre-recorded voice.   What a ridiculous choice!  (A piece by someone like Webern would have been far more appropriate.)  I like Feldman (see elsewhere in this blog..), but I don't have the patience to sit through a solo vocal piece of that length.   Since the concert was at MOMA, I went to the galleries, and popped into the concert to hear the Schoenberg, and then left.   The Schoenberg was a huge disappointment, because all the instruments and voice were AMPLIFIED!  This ruined all the delicate balances, as the harmonium was overamplified.   I was really annoyed. In addition, Lang's long spoken introduction was idiotic.   Institutions such as MOMA should learn to treat music with a little more respect.


Update:  Be sure to read David Lang's comment.  I do regret calling his talk idiotic, what I should have said was that the talk was pitched more at the level of a high school audience than at what one would presume to be an artistically oriented and sophisticated New York audience.

Crazy people in New York

Every day I take Maggie for a walk in the morning in Riverside Park, and we spend a fair amount of time stalking the squirrels.  People leave bird food at the base of trees, which also interests the squirrels, who are often torn between the desire to get some of the food and the need to evade Maggie.  Normally, they climb up the tree, and gradually start climbing down again, until they get to close to Maggie, and then they retreat.  The other day, there was what seemed to be a young squirrel, who was stuck in a very small tree, with no apparent method of escape.  I was resigned to dragging Maggie away, when I saw the squirrel climb to the highest branch of the tree, and begin to contemplate a flying leap to the nearest tree.  I cheered the squirrel on, and loudly voiced my congratulations when it made it to the tree.  I then turned around to see another dog walker standing close to me, who was probably wondering about this crazy person who was talking to squirrels.   So what's wrong with talking to squirrels?

Maggie and a squirrel contemplating each other:

Music from Canada

The other night I went to hear the Aventa Ensemble at Roulette in Brooklyn.   The Aventa Ensemble is an excellent new music group based in Victoria BC that frequently tours across Canada and Europe.  (Though for some reason, they never play in Vancouver.  Musical politics?)   And here they were in New York.   The best part of the program was a piece entitled something like Black Box by a young Danish composer.  This featured a live video on stage  of a camera that was inside a black box, with various objects being manipulated by a pair of hands, and a large ensemble spread around three sides of the room.  The music was percussive, lively, and inventive.  But the effect was eventually spoiled by mickey-mousing music that responded to the hand gestures in the video.   The two Canadian pieces on the program were both overly long, self-indulgent, and uninteresting.  

Gutai

I went with our friend Christopher to see the Gutai exhibition at the Guggenheim. This show is about a movement in postwar Japan, that like many postwar movements, sought to upend any traditional concepts of what art was supposed to be about, with an emphasis on the spirit of play and engagement with the materials.  I was expecting a series of conceptual and gestural statements; we got those, but there were also a large number of paintings.   They looked something like abstract expressionism, but without philosophy and psychology.  It was more about things like painting with feet, and with bodies (this before the famous body paintings of Yves Klein), and pouring buckets of paint here and there.  This painting was made by painting with a remote controlled little electric car with a paintbrush attached:

Some other paintings:

This one has a bear skin in it:

I liked the show; the exuberance of the art was exciting; there were also some interesting installation type things, and I learned about an art movement I had known nothing about.

A few more:

Parsifal

On Wednesday night, we went to hear the new production of Parsifal at the Met.  It was a long evening, starting with dinner in the Grand Tier restaurant at 4 PM and ending just before midnight.   Parsifal might be the ultimate Wagnerian opera; it is problematic, to say the least.  The plot could probably be described in a paragraph, and parts of it stretch time out to an extremely slow pace, and characters reflect endlessly on their situation.  The Wagnerian view of Christianity is confusing, and ultimately, I ended up not looking at the surtitles.  The last act, however, contains what is to me some of the most sublime music I have ever heard, and the orchestra and singing were nothing short of superb.  The production itself sets the opera in a kind of post-apoclyptic landscape; barren ground and barely any light.  Non-stop gloom, in fact.  The second act is set in a kind of cave, with the entire stage covered in a pool of blood.   When one of the characters sings about all the flowers around, there are none to be seen.   While the sets and video projections (including some 2001-like cosmic images) are stunning, the relentless gloom and darkness get to you after a while.   But ultimately, it is about the music, and to hear Wagner's music played and sung in a performance of such intensity is a thrilling experience.  Though not one I would want to repeat very often.

A few images

The pool of blood, and the flower maidens, in a very wide screen image:

The Mingus Orchestra

Last night we heard the Mingus Orchestra at the Jazz Standard, a club at 27th and Lexington which serves excellent food and has great music.   The Mingus Orchestra is a group of musicians, organized by Mingus's widow, Sue Mingus, that is devoted to playing the more esoteric music that Mingus composed. (There is also a Mingus Big Band.) The ensemble includes French Horn, Bassoon, Bass Clarinet, and Flute along with all the instruments one would normally expect in a big band; it's a kind of hybrid big band.   The music they played ranged from a film score to a vocal number written for Billie Holiday.  Mingus's music is always interesting; rather that the traditional tune followed by individual solos, we often hear the ensemble return in the middle of the solos with new material.   The ensemble itself plays with a kind of improvisatory informality which is exciting; someone may yell out in the middle of the tune to tell the musicians to do something.  Clearly a labor of love on the part of the musicians, (though they do get paid) it is wonderful to hear this music played live.  Mingus is one of my favorite composers.

Powder Her Face

Last night we heard a performance of Thomas Adès's opera "Powder Her Face" at BAM. This opera, written in 1994, is notorious for its fellatio scene; it chronicles the decline of a duchess, based on the true life story of the Duchess of Argyll.  The opera begins with a series of raucous, debauched episodes, with music that frequently alludes to popular styles, but transformed by Adès into something quite his own.   The famous fellatio scene was overstaged by the director, who has some 25 fully nude men emerge from various places in the Duchess's hotel room, so while she goes about her business of seducing a waiter, there are these 25 men crowding the stage, not doing very much.   Makes for great publicity, though.   The opera really comes in to its own in the second act, with the Duchess's downfall, and her very moving aria, which resembles that of Berg's Lulu.  Indeed, the whole second act echoes Berg's Lulu, both character-wise and musically, with a haunting, elegiac quality which clearly shows Adès's empathy with his main character. The staging, which emphasizes the sort of tawdry, sordid celebrity-driven aspects of the story, detracts from the music here, which I think is profound and moving.

Wandering the neighborhood with a dog

For the last week, I have had a terrible cold, and have only been out to walk Maggie, which is four times a day.  After doing this for a while, I am getting a more detailed sense of the neighborhood than I have ever had before.  We either go to Riverside Park, with its abundant and bold squirrel population, or to Broadway, with all the stores and everpresent crowds of people.   Maggie likes both of them, and so do I.  I enjoy looking at the sculpted contours of Riverside Park, and the curved fronts of the apartment buildings that border it.  Between Riverside Park and Broadway there are both apartment buildings of varying degrees of pomposity and some charming old townhouses, including some nicely detailed old brownstones.   All the buildings date from the 1920's or before, and all feature some kind of ornamental decoration.  (Ornamentation will be the subject of a future post, once I get the right pictures)   Broadway itself has all kinds of stores, and including our 24-hour supermarket, which features brightly lit piles of fruits and veggies outside;  quite a vision on a frigid, windy night.

Today, when I took Maggie on for a walk on Broadway, she stopped in front of a shoe store that had floor to ceiling windows.  She gives me her look that says. "I want to go in here."    I say "No, Maggie, that's a shoe store!".   Maggie then sits, and gives me that very determined look "I really, really want to go in here!"   I pull on the leash, and she won't budge.   She really wants to go in there.  I explain that there is a sign that says "No pets, please".    Finally, I get her to move, and we go on to the next store, which is a pet store, which is what I think she had in mind in the first place.  (The one with a parrot inside that says  "hello" constantly, which gets Maggie very curious.)  We had only been in that store once before, but I am wondering if she actually had a sense of where it was and was just off by one store.  Or else she really did want a pair of shoes....


One other thing I have noticed that I hadn't really thought about before is that New York's system of garbage collection involves all the apartment buildings putting their garbage out on the street in plastic bags the night before.  And with the recent blizzard, garbage collection got behind.   For me, that means that Maggie wants to sniff every garbage bag there is, especially the ones that might have been chewed a bit by rats.  There has to be a better way.  (Though in Tokyo, they do it exactly the same way, and the Japanese have most urban things figured out..)