Art Outside of Museums

One of the less known pleasures of being in New York is to go to look at the pre-auction exhibitions of Sotheby's and Christie's.   What you see is an astonishing variety of art, some of it extraordinary, and a fair amount of it routine.    But the end result is a show which would be the envy of any provincial museum.   And the exhibitions are not curated in any thematic way.   What you see is what people want to sell.  Some viewers may miss the idea of a curatorial voice in what we see on the walls.   While I often appreciate a well curated exhibition, it doesn't bother me to not have that voice.  I am happy to look at art.  (There is a quite a bit of debate these days in art criticism about the role of the institutional apparatus of museums in shaping how we understand art. In this case, there is no question about the role of the institution.  It wants very rich people to buy the art.)  I went to the viewings at Christie's at Rockefeller Center.  There were wonderful things to see, especially a Paris-period Kandinsky that had very interesting textural details that wouldn't show up in any normal reproductions.   The paint was mixed with sand in some cases.   Christie's created a mini catalog just for this painting.     A Monet haystack painting, a great DeKooning, Picasso, Cezanne, etc. as well as Helen Frankenthaler, and many big names from the contemporary art world.   There was a large Gerhard Richter painting advertised as belonging to the collection of Eric Clapton, estimated to sell for 25 million dollars.  With CD sales tanking, maybe he needs the money....

I also did a gallery day in Chelsea to see some of the new big name exhibits, both in photography and painting.    While in general photography is not a big thing on the contemporary art world, there are a few photographers that have somehow transcended the photography world and entered in to the contemporary art world, with its corresponding stratospheric prices.  Hiroshi Sugimoto is one example.  Andreas Gursky is a another.   He made his name with fascinating very large size photographs like this one:

There was a new show of his work at the Gagosian Gallery, with works like this one of an Amazon warehouse  (It's about 12 feet long);  every detail of the merchandise is crystal clear.   It's not clear, however, the extent to which it has been assembled and composed in Photoshop or something like that.

He has been drifting towards more conceptually oriented work in the last few years, but some of the newer work connects more directly to his earlier work.   Part of the point of these works to me is their sheer monumentality.   They are really big!  We don't normally think of photographs as things of this size.    Part of me enjoys this massive quality, while another part of me gets annoyed by it; these are clearly showpiece type of works, meant to impress, and created for museums and for people with huge white wall spaces.

One of my favorite photographers is William Eggleston, who creates beautifully composed color images out of the mundane world of American daily life, particularly in the South.   The David Zwirner Gallery had a show of images newly printed from his classic series from the 1980's, "The Democratic Forest".    I was very surprised when I arrived at the show to see very large size photographs (about 3 feet by 4 feet).    All the Egglestons I have seen before were much smaller.   These were in fact new prints from older negatives, and perhaps made larger than before to help compete in the "bigness" category as exemplified by the Gursky photos.   In addition, Eggleston's original prints of the time were made with something called the dye transfer process, which enables an extraordinary vividness of color.  These new prints are pigment prints, and do not have that vividness, to my eyes.  An, in addition, the large size prints basically look too blown up; I prefer the standard size.   But I still love the photos, and anyone who has looked at my photos on this blog will see that affinity.

A few examples:

Another photographer on my itinerary was the Canadian Edward Burtynsky.  Burtynsky has always caught my eye with his dramatic large-scale photographs of degradations of our environment, usually taken from a great height.   I have always found myself drawn to his work in photography books, but I found myself questioning the whole enterprise when I saw the works in their normal large scale format (about 5 to 6 feet wide).  They became too pretentious.   And, as well, there is something perverse about finding beauty in, say the different colored pools of the polluted residue of mining operations.

One of the fun parts of doing the galleries is coming across work you have never heard of or seen before.   I wandered into a gallery showing the work of Sandi Haber Fitfield.   She does an interesting combination of photography and drawing.   She uses manipulated photos, often of line centered things from nature, and then draws in both graphite and color around them.   Although the idea seems simple, it somehow in my eyes does something that is different from other photography or drawing.

Finally, after all these photographs, there were paintings.   First of all, a small show of the work of one of my favorites, Joan Mitchell.

(I was at the Metropolitan Museum a few days later, and I was immediately struck by this Monet, which looked very much like some of Mitchell's work.)

And, finally, a show of Mark Rothko paintings entitled "Dark Palette" focusing on paintings of his that used very dark colors.  It was an intense experience to see these several rooms of very dark paintings.   They reveal themselves slowly.   Some were really, really dark.   It was particularly  interesting to see one of the paintings commissioned for the Four Seasons restaurant (and never used).    You can't really photograph Rothko, but this Four Season painting had a very unusual shape for a Rothko.

Amazing to think that I saw all of the work in this post without stepping into a museum!

Mahler's 11th Symphony and Other Concerts

I went to hear a production of Don Giovanni at the Met.  I love the opera, and though the critics had deemed the production "drab", I went anyway.   It was fabulous!   Once again I was perched in a seat above the orchestra, and the performance by Fabio Luisi and the Met Orchestra was as exciting and nuanced as you could want.   In my next incarnation, I want to be the conductor of the Met Orchestra.   (Though, please, when I am on my way there, I ask my survivors not to try to hasten the process by scattering my ashes in the orchestra pit.)   The singers all had their good and great moments, and the acting and staging were in general good.    And again, I came away in awe of Mozart's genius.   It's hard to add anything to what's been said about Don Giovanni over the years, other than to say I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.   Within the relatively constrained parameters of late 18th century musical style, Mozart's music is extraordinarily expressive and constantly inventive.   And sometimes downright perverse and subversive.
So why was the production called "drab"?   I did some internet searching, and it seems that many critics expect directors to bring something new and different to a production.   The worst thing you can do is set it in Seville, as this production did, instead of updating it, say,  to be set in a fish canning factory or whatever.   (I remember seeing Suzanne Osten's film, "The Mozart Brothers", which is a comedy about a crazy director with outlandish ideas about a production of Don Giovanni.  He wants it set in a graveyard filled with mud, and the entire opera takes place during the moment that a dying Don Giovanni is falling to the ground.  He was killed in the opening duel, it seems.  What seemed like pure satire when it was made (1985) now seems rather tame compared to some newer takes on opera staging.)
One thing that struck me about this production is that the singers spent a great deal of their time at the very front part of the stage, with the set right behind them.  Which meant that their voices and stage presence were very immediate to the audience, something that many  opera directors are unconcerned with.  Mr. Trelinksi in particular might be happier if his singers were kept off the stage entirely.

I should say that what bothers me in opera productions is not when they change the setting or details of the plot.   It is when the production violates or negates what the composer has written, and reduces the music to an incidental element in the director's concept.   I remember seeing Peter Sellar's production of Don Giovanni many years ago. It was set in Spanish Harlem in the 1950's, and everything Sellars did was a reflection of the music.  It was the best production of Don Giovanni I have ever seen.


I went with our friends Jane and George to hear the Canadian jazz pianist Rene Rosnes at the Village Vanguard.   It was surprising when I realized that the last time I was in the Village Vanguard was around 1972, when I went with my friend Istvan to hear a performance of the Mingus band.   The performance is still vivid in my memory.   I also remember that, when the last set was over, we got in my VW bug and drove back to college in Vermont, arriving as the sun was rising.   Oh to be young!

Rosnes's band was excellent, with vibes, bass and drum.  Though to be honest, there were problems with the balance of sound.   The Vanguard is a small room, and we were close to the piano, but the vibes and drum consistently drowned out the piano.   Rosnes is a composer as well, but unfortunately she didn't always announce the names of the tunes she was playing, so I have no idea which, if any, were her tunes.   In any case, she is an excellent pianist, and it was a pleasure to hear her play.   My sense is that she could be more original in her sound; a lot of her solos were played with fairly conventional right-hand virtuosic solo lines, with the left hand doing the usual chord changes.



With the genre of music I hear seemingly shifting constantly, our next events were two concerts in Carnegie Hall by the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Simon Rattle.    The first was a performance of Boulez's "Eclat", followed by Mahler Symphony 7.   We were up in the highest reaches of the balcony.    The concert was extraordinary.    The Boulez, for fifteen instruments,  was a delicate weave of sonorities.  The instruments included a cimbalom and mandolin.   The performance was beautifully balanced and all the sounds came through, even in the vastness of Carnegie Hall.  For some reason the Boulez (composed in 1965) made me think of some of the more delicate abstract expressionists, with little flashes of color and unexpected shapes and formations.   Rattle's point in programming the Boulez became clear after we heard the Mahler 7, which is also an intricate weave of orchestral sonorities, only on a vast, vast scale.     The performance of the Mahler was vivid and enlightening.    It made me think that Mahler's 7th is his most radical and modern symphony.   Shards and fragments of all kinds of melodies constantly reappeared in different colors and tonalities, all as if in some kind of giant kaleidoscope.   Mahler's ear for orchestral sonorities is so original, and the Berliners made everything sound that way, abetted by the splendid sound of Carnegie Hall.
The next night, we were back for more.   The first half was what Rattle described as "Mahler's 11th symphony".   There is no such thing, of course; the program consisted of early orchestral works by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern (Schoenberg's Five Pieces op. 16, Webern's Six Pieces Op. 6b, and Berg's Three Pieces Op. 6).   Rattle had the idea to play them as one continuous piece, with no interruptions or long pauses in between, thus making a kind of invented 14 movement symphony.   And Rattle's intention was also to show how the pieces developed out of Mahler's work.  (The three composers were great admirers of Mahler's music.)  This was a fascinating idea, though in practice, I found it somewhat difficult.   The music is extremely concise, dense, and concentrated; maintaining a high level of focused listening over that time (more than forty minutes) is not easy.  But, with the previous night's Mahler in our ears, the point worked.   Although the differences were striking as well.   Mahler relies on so many pieces from his musical scrap pile, bits of waltzes, sentimental melodies, marches, etc. whereas the other's allusions are very sparse or nonexistent.   And Mahler wants huge chunks of time, and the others, especially Webern, were busy compressing events into shorter and shorter durations.   The performances were stunning; I have never heard these pieces played with such musicality and beautifully realized details.   What has often sounded like mush in other recordings or performances I have heard was crystal clear in these performances.   You really heard all their newly imagined sonorities. It was a revelation; I may never ever again hear these pieces played so well.  
The second half of the program was Brahm's Second Symphony, in a beautifully realized performance.   The Berlin Philharmonic is one of the best in the world; they really play like chamber musicians, with all the orchestral timbres balanced and details clearly audible.   What a treat!

When I was young, my grandmother used to take me to concerts at Carnegie Hall.  We were always in the balcony, where we were for these concerts.   It's astonishing to think that I have been going to Carnegie Hall for over fifty years!

I was amused to see that some of the people sitting next to us, most likely orchestral neophytes, had little idea of what to make of the first half, and left at intermission, thus missing the Brahms, which undoubtedly would have pleased them a great deal more.  And I give great credit to Rattle and the people at Carnegie Hall who create such programs; luckily, the appeal of the Berlin Philharmonic to New York audiences is so great that they can be guaranteed a sellout without having to feature flashy big name soloists (which is how many orchestras need to market their concerts.)

Speaking of orchestras, I haven't been to any regular NY Philharmonic concerts this fall.  I think perhaps financial circumstances have forced them to be quite conservative in their programming; an endless parade of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and violin concerto warhorses is what they do, along with a few ill-fitting stabs at something contemporary.   A sad end to the promise of the Gilbert era.

Gowanus Canal

I have finally gotten the time to begin wandering around parts of New York that I don't know, so I went to the Gowanus Canal area of Brooklyn.   The Gowanus Canal is a short canal (originally a stream) that is a branch of New York harbor.  It famous for being one of the most polluted sites in the United States, and is now an EPA superfund site.  The pollution was/is both industrial and sewage related. It's the kind of water that if a teenager in a horror movie fell into it, he or she might emerge as a mutant toxic avenger.  It was originally a heavily industrialized site, now very little of that industry is left.   It is, however, between the Park Slope and Carroll Gardens areas of Brooklyn, meaning that it is valuable real estate, so , in the ways of New York, it is being redeveloped.    So next to the stink of the canal, a metal scrapyard and abandoned industrial buildings, there is a Whole Foods and new condos.   There was a New Yorker cover which satirized this phenomenon.

So I went to wander and take pictures, looking as always, for color and geometry, as well as the unusual and unexpected.

Well, the canal looks rather pleasant from this angle, but don't even think of touching the water.

And there is a beautiful old wooden bridge:

New condos, with industrial ruins in the foreground:

An old water tower across from the new condos:

There was an extraordinary old abandoned power plant, which at a certain point became a squatter's paradise, nicknamed "The Batcave"

The blogger Nathan Kensinger posted this photo of the interior:

Then there were lots of other things I saw:

Piles of scrap metal:

And all those water bottles:

Despair and Incomprehension

This blog normally excludes any kind of political commentary, but on the occasion of the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, I cannot possibly pretend that the world is normal.  

David Remnick in the New Yorker puts it clearly:

"The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety."

I cannot understand how the country I was born in can elect someone who is so manifestly unqualified to be president.   I can understand that people might have different political views from mine, and that in a democracy, people can choose to vote the issues that are important to them.    But I am ashamed to be from a country that would elect such a horrible person to be the president, and I really can't understand how this has happened.  
As Jennine Crucet in the NY Times put it succinctly after conversing with a Trump voting relative of Cuban descent,  "I cannot make sense of these choices.  There is no sense to be made."

The only positive thing I can think of in what is happened is that now that the right wing is totally in charge, they have nobody to demonize any more.   Whatever happens is a consequence of their policies.   Who can they blame for the next catastrophe?  The liberals have no power.   I only hope the people who were conned into voting for Trump begin to realize what they have done when the wall fails to materialize and the coal mines stay closed.

I will continue to write this blog and write about the things that I love, but with a deep-seated anguish about what has happened to the world I live in.    I have no choice but to go on and cherish what still exists.   And I treasure the experience of being in New York City, where, despite all the tensions of city life, I feel reassured by the enormous diversity of humanity around me.

Lots of exhibits!

I saw a wonderful show at the Studio Museum in Harlem, a mini retrospective of the work of Alma Thomas.  Thomas was a late bloomer, who only got started on painting seriously late in her life.    Though she was the first African-American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney (in 1974), her work has mostly remained obscure since then, mostly, I think, because her work is abstract and avoids any political issues.    She herself said that she did not want her painting to embody all the terrible things she saw in the world around her, but rather to create her own world outside of these concerns.   The paintings are imaginative, inventive, and intriguing in their use of color and rhythm.
Some samples:

This one was apparently painted after Thomas saw a show of late Matisse cutouts.

I saw a wonderful exhibit at the Met Breuer of works of Paul Klee from their Berggreuen collection.   They normally don't have the inclination to show them very often, but with their new space, they have done so.    There were quite a few early works, where you see Klee moving towards abstraction.  (The captions noted Klee's statement that he moved toward abstraction in order to keep drab reality at bay.)   The paintings are not drab, to say the least.   One other thing that stuck me this time was how much we see of Klee's "handmade" aesthetic, with "primitive", child-like scribbles and nails hammered into the canvas.  And his sense of humor.

There was also a show at the Met Breuer of early photographs of Diane Arbus.   I'm not a big fan of her work.   In the early work, you see her developing her taste for photographing the fringes of society.   One striking kind of images were those taken inside movie theaters while the film was running.  This was in the 1950's.   The exhibit also included a few of her famous later images; it is amazing how iconic some of them have become, like the image of the two identical twin girls dressed alike.


There was a new show of photography at MOMA.    Surprisingly, there were actually photographs on the walls.   It turns out that it was a show honoring a recent donation of photographs by Joyce and Robert Menschel.    It's a wonderful collection, spanning from the beginnings of photography to the present.  There is nothing like looking at great photographs in their original prints, especially by people such as Harry Callahan and Berenice Abbott. I hope the donors realize that the likelihood of these photographs ever being exhibited again is slim.   The normal photography galleries at MOMA have been closed since April "for renovation" and it is rumored  that they will not re-emerge as photography galleries.  (More room for Bjork shows instead?)   So no more exhibits of works by Atget, Evans, Abbott and the like?  They have a huge collection of great photographs, and none of them are on display.   Not trendy enough for them, I suppose.   Makes me want to give up my membership.   MOMA says it's all part of their ongoing expansion and renovation, but they haven't said what will happen.  (The architecture and design galleries are closed, too, which is provoking outrage in the architectural community.)



I also went to the new incarnation of the famous Maastricht art fair which is now setting up in New York as well at the Park Avenue Armory.  The show  includes old masters, Greek sculpture, African art, illuminated manuscripts, and lots of other things.   Like a mini Met Museum, except, of course, it is all for sale.   It's kind of startling to see something like an ancient Greek statue or an early Sienese painting that is available for purchase.  (And they are probably a lot cheaper than a Jeff Koons.)   But there were some really interesting and beautiful things to see.   Like this map, the first known European map which includes New York Harbor.   It's about six feet long, and absolutely beautiful, with lapis lazuli , etc.   Yours for only ten million dollars.

Or if that won't work for you, how about an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus?  (mummy not included.)  It is very well preserved, and the details on the surface are extraordinary.

Or perhaps an early Mondrian is more your thing...

A Japanese screen painting:

There were quite a few dealers selling African and Micronesian art.

No contemporary art at all, of course, and barely anything from the twentieth century.  But that was the specification for the show.   But fascinating none the less.   One very unexpected object was a collection of samples of different colored marble and other stones of the kind used in pieta dura, all stored in a specially constructed cabinet.

Part of the show was in the upstairs rooms at the Armory, so I got a chance to see some of the locker rooms, which are mostly unrestored, many with beautiful wood paneling.





There was a show of recent paintings and other work by Julie Mehretu at the Goodman Gallery.  I am fond her work, mostly because there are many layers of information, with a depth that intrigues me.   I was especially taken with this large scale "photogravure and etching" entitled "Epigraph, Damascus", which from a distance looks like a Japanese scroll painting.

From closer, it looks like this:

When you get even closer, you find out that it has etchings that are overlaid on architectural drawings, apparently of buildings in Damascus.

There was an astonishing show at the DiDonna Gallery entitled "Paths to the Absolute".  It consisted of only 13 works; two each by Mondrian, Kandinsky, Barnett Newman, Malevich and three by Rothko.  And a Pollock and a Still.

(I was allowed to take installation pictures, but not pictures of the individual works.)

I was the only person there, other than gallery staff and two security guards.  (I always think about the Jem Cohen movie about the security guards at the Vienna Museum, and wonder what it can be like to spend the entire day, for days on end, as a security guard in this exhibit.  There are no windows.)   It was absolutely silent, and I spent a long time in rapt contemplation of the work.   What a treat!
One of the Mondrians was a late work, and fascinating because instead of the normal sharply contrasted black lines, there were some that were only half there, as if the were in the process of being erased.   Is this unfinished?   I have no idea.  I have never seen a Mondrian like it.

Enlarged from my installation view:

Eventually you ask yourself, how is it that this presumably for-profit gallery has assembled this spectacular show for me to see for free?    Are these works for sale?   What's their angle?   Almost all of them are listed as belonging to "private collections".  
Well, some internet research turned up the information that the works are not for sale.   But, on the other hand, maybe for the right sum the owners could possibly be persuaded to part with them.  And that's what it is about.

The gallery estimates the net value of the 13 works to be about 450 million dollars.

So that Mondrian belongs to someone, and when the show is over, it will presumably go back home.
The world of art is certainly a strange place.   But I am quite happy to profit from it in my own way.

Dr. Atomic, Dr. Iyer, Willian Tell, and Steve Reich

We went with David to hear a program by the Juilliard Orchestra, conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky.   The Juilliard Orchestra is an excellent ensemble, and even more so because it plays in Alice Tully Hall, which is much smaller than Geffen Hall or Carnegie Hall and has a very appealing acoustic for orchestral details.   The concert began with Salonen's "Nyx", a fairly recent orchestral work of his.  I had the same reaction I have had to previous works of his; appealing sounds and rhythms, but very unmemorable melodic ideas, with the lack of a compelling dramatic shape on first hearing.  Or, to put it another way, his music lacks (to my ears) a kind of danger or idiosyncratic quality which puts you a bit on the edge of your seat.   The next piece was a performance of Bartok's Viola Concerto, which is certainly a problematic enterprise, as it was constructed out of fragments that Bartok left behind when he died.  I didn't hear a whole lot that sounded like Bartok to me, but the young soloist, Matthew Cohen, was excellent.   But the reason we went to the concert was the piece on the second half, John Adams's "Dr. Atomic Symphony".   Adams composed the work using material from his great opera "Dr. Atomic", developing ideas which he was not able to develop within the constraints of theatrical time.   It was a great piece, and the orchestra did a fabulous job of performing it.   Adams's music has exactly that character which I miss in Salonen's work.  Though you certainly hear things that echo other composers, somehow it all blends together to make something that is uniquely Adams.   There were wonderful clashing orchestral sounds, beautiful solo lines, and many moments of rhythmic chaos.  The piece has a clear dramatic focus, and was in no way a potpourri of themes from the opera.   A great pleasure.

Two nights later, for something completely different, we went to hear (again with David and our friends Krin and Paula) the Vijay Iyer Trio at Columbia's Miller Theater.  Iyer has been awarded every possible jazz award, a MacArthur grant, and is now teaching at Harvard.   Nonetheless, I was considerably disappointed in both his piano playing and his compositions.   In fact, I don't really get what all the fuss is about.    My problem is simply with his harmonic language; virtually everything is modal, and is chord progressions are extremely predictable.   Dissonances are avoided, and his overall harmonic world is constrained to a mild-mannered sort of Debussyian style.   He does work in elements from Monk and Ellington tunes (and a Michael Jackson tune, though I have to be told that, because I am clueless), and they kind of stick out.   In fact, I would have to say that Ellington is far more adventurous as a pianist than Iyer.  What I do like, though, are the rhythmic ideas that he and his ensemble develop (Stephan Crump on bass and Tyshawn Storey on drums).  There are lots of intriguingly complex polyrhythmic ideas going on, and together they develop some wonderfully idiosyncratic grooves.   Story is a talented and exciting drummer, but unfortunately he tends to overwhelm the relatively reticent Iyer when he plays loudly.   The ensemble also had wonderful sense of dynamics, going from very loud to very soft, though eventually the pattern of slowly getting louder, playing loudly, then getting softer enventually became a cliche.  But overall, I was disappointed.
Though, obviously, I am out of the mainstream opinion here, and maybe I just fail to understand what's going on.

And then, three nights later, for something really, really different, we went to hear Rossini's last opera, "William Tell", at the Metropolitan Opera.  I'm not in the habit of going to Rossini operas, and especially five hour ones, but you never know until you try.
William Tell is Rossini's last opera, and was his attempt to write a "grand opera" in the French style.   My resident musicologist tells me that the style had fairly specific requirements; there must be ballet music, etc. and things were done for more for effect than for dramatic integrity.   And that was the case; there were some stunning musical moments, as well as long sections where things were repeated endlessly and the drama lagged.  The title role was sung magnificently by Gerald Finley, and yes, he gets to shoot the apple on top of his son's head.    The chorus plays a big role in the drama, and they were magnificent.   And the orchestra, as always, was superb; their knockout version of the famous overture got an ovation from the audience.  (Was it for the performance, or for the heroic "Lone Ranger" theme?)     And yes, there was a new production, which had some very good moments as well as some peculiarly inappropriate moments.   But after the horrors of the previous week's production of Tristan,  I was happy to see a production which allowed the singers to stand on the stage and sing their parts.  (Is it time to bring back "park and bark"?)

A few days later, we went to an all Steve Reich concert at Juilliard, performed by the student ensemble Axiom.   (Reich was a Juilliard student once upon a time.)
There are many things I like about Reich's music, especially the focus on rhythm and harmony, and on musical patterns that are perceptible.   His early work, in which he basically threw out all conventional notions of music and rebuilt it from scratch, so to speak, was revolutionary.   It certainly paved the way for a retreat from the excessive complexity that characterized some of the music at that time.   (Though the conventional wisdom these days that somehow serialism was the ruling aesthetic at that time is largely overstated.)  He also threw out the conventional notion of music as intensely expressive.   (I can remember sitting countless pieces at that time that were expressing some kind of generic angst; it became extremely tiresome.)   But, at the same time, I have a lot of problems listening to music that is extremely repetitive.  I do not get into any trance-like states, and I become desperate for a break in something.   (A composition teacher of mine, Henry Brant, once suggested that it would be a good idea to go through a score you had written and randomly erase notes to make it more interesting.   Crude, but he had a point.)   Just as a short story writer doesn't have to tell you everything that happens, we can imply rhythms without pounding them out incessantly.
 At the concert, we heard an early work, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ,  which was largely static harmonically and rhythmically, but had wonderfully intricate waving of patterns of short melodic ideas.    It sounded very Balinese gamelan influenced.    The next piece, City Life, is a major work for large ensemble from 1995.   In it, Reich juxtaposes prerecorded samples of city sounds, very much of the period, including car alarms, shouts of protest, etc.   The juxtaposition doesn't work for me; the very literal meaning of the recorded sounds jars with the more subtle, variable meanings of the purely musical elements.    The music is quite expressive, though, and occasionally evokes the musical sound of Copland or Stravinsky.   By the last piece, the Double Sextet, the constantly repeating rhythmic patterns with the two pianos and percussion had began to annoy me; but, at the same time,  I found the complex and intricate ideas that the rest of the ensemble were playing were very interesting, and at times quite dissonant.   I longed to be able to hear them more clearly without the motor rhythms.  
The performances by the Juilliard students and conductor Jeffrey Milarsky were excellent, and I am certainly grateful for the chance to be able to hear all this music performed live.   Reich himself was there to take a bow to a warm ovation from the audience.   It's hard to believe he is eighty years old!