Notes from the Underground, A Music Review

Of course I'm biased but it's hard to say that Ben Pierce's new project is anything short of impeccable. I love it. And, anyone who is into well-performed contemporary music will love it too.

There are several reasons why this album is a success. In general,  Kristy Mezines, did a superb job; she's the pianist. A lot of the music on the album is brand new. It's always hard being the first to collaborate on stuff that has never been performed in my opinion. She knocks it out of the park. Also, the very fact that there is so much new music is pretty cool. And even cooler is the fact that one of the new pieces is from University of Arkansas' own Dr. Robert Mueller (Professor of Composition and Theory).

Among the more specific things I admire about this project is the musicality that Pierce brings to every piece on the CD. Whether it's fast or slow, high or low, the music speaks. There is something human and expressive happening at all times.

The second reason why I love this album is the virtuosity presented in various pieces. Moto Perpetuo, op. 2 (Christoskov) shows a very traditional type of virtuosity and showmanship. It is glorious in its own right and Pierce executes it with unbelievable agility and intensity.

What is more impressive to me, however, is the Sonata in G Major (Eccles). 

He performs this, of course, on the tuba, as it is originally written for double bass. I like that it demands extreme dexterity like a "show piece" might. However, it is restrained and controlled; intelligible. Dr. Pierce has separated himself from a superficial approach to technique often heard from tuba artists (even some well-known ones). The way he plays the sonata combines showmanship with elegance and clarity.  Whereas, some tubists play showy things that ostensibly sound impressive: there are lots of notes, it hangs in an extended range, it is fast. Great. But when you listen further, the melody of these fast passages is more percussive than melodious. The musicality and calm is lost. It becomes more of a statement that, "I can play really fast, loud, and high. And you should applaud this because I'm a tuba player and most tuba players can't do this much." I feel that the Dr. Pierce's performance of this sonata makes tubists reconsider what it means to be a virtuosic tuba player. That's what it did for me at least.

This brings me to the third reason why I am a fan of Notes from the Underground. 

The repertoire.

It is both diversified and accessible. "New Music" often comes with a connotation of borderline tonal and just plain weird. For the selections on the album that could fall under this daunting category, they are offset by being accessible through their programmatic nature (Lebedeva) or through deeply lyrical melodies (Mueller). The Mueller piece actually puts me in the mind of Hindemith's sonatas a little bit. For those who don't like Hindemith, the connection I'm drawing between the two is my own opinion.  So give the Mueller piece a chance anyway. It's totally worth it.

There is something for everyone's musical comfort level on the album but also something to extend everyone's palette a little bit. Or at the very least, something that will make you think more highly of low brass solo music and performance.

Professor Pierce will be performing on Tuesday, February 12, 7:30 PM in the Stella Boyles Recital Hall on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville. For more awe and wonder check out Ben Pierce's website. His albums are also available through iTunes.

Django Unchained - A Review and Rant

Well, hot damn, Tarantino. You did it and you did it good!

I loved the movie. It was full of passion, romance, action, butt kicking, and most of all good acting. I loved the music too. It was The Good the Bad and the Ugly meets crooning meets the body-thumping bass of hip hop. It was hardly flawless but I think the flaws are greatly overshadowed by the spirit and realism of the story.

The story begins in 1858, Texas, USA. Django (Jamie Foxx) is rescued by a German "dentist" named Dr. Schultz-who is really a bounty hunter. He needs Django's help in identifying some wanted men, as Django was once a slave of these wanted men. The good doctor, in my opinion, carries the show. He's funny, against slavery, and is a smooth talker. Django, was separated from his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and desperately wants to find her because they are in love. A ton of chaos and adventure goes on... you'll have to see it. There is a lot of Tarantino-style blood, where it looks like guts come out of people no matter if they're shot in the arm or the stomach. A bit graphic, but that's Tarantino's fantastical nature at hand.

What truly makes this movie a success is its polemic. Not since Roots has there been a mainstream slave-time depiction on film, television or otherwise. When it came to the true horrors of slave life, Tarantino did not go the route of fantastical and cartoonish. He went the route of what was dark and real; frankly, things that aren't talked about anymore. When I was growing up in middle and high school, slavery was a bad thing that happened long ago. End of story. Django, very realistically, showed exactly the kind of bad that slavery was. It rehashed the severity of 300 plus years that is largely trivialized today; many kids naively conceive black slavery as a bunch of people working in fields, who were sometimes whipped.

So to Spike Lee and other dissenters of the film, get over yourself.

People need to be reminded what it was like. The story is fictional, obviously. But the N word was not.  It was 1858. That's what black people were called back then. Anyone criticizing that lives in a bigger fantasy world than Tarantino. Hot boxes were something I never learned about in school. But they were very real, as were the mandingo fights, mammies, field slaves, comfort slaves, and courtesan (mistress) slaves all depicted in the movie. And frankly, if you research these slave functions, you'll find a surprising "family tree" of how these functions have manifested themselves in today's society. The brutality in Django was nothing short of accurate. It wasn't any less true than the chained slaves thrown off ships during the Middle Passage journeys (Roots).

Was the "Spaghetti-Western" style fictitious? Yes. Was the overall storyline fictitious? Yes. Were some of the guns in the movie not invented until after the Civil War? Yes.

But that's the nature of Tarantino's work: extreme, hyperbolic. Who doesn't want the underdog to have power?  Who can make that a downgrade of the movie when so much of it welcomed an unadulterated depiction of slave life?

In the end, I'm forced to think that Spike Lee is mad for two reasons: He has become irrelevant. His last big hit was He Got Game. He has released movies since then but not with as much positive reception. And I'd like to add that Summer of Sam was a movie that said the F word more times than any movie that had existed until then. It's hard to say that this expletive was even a little bit historic as was the use of the N word in Django Unchained. It is easy to say, however, that there is a lot of unnecessary hypocrisy going on. Spike is drinking some haterade.

In my opinion, the movie was both entertaining and educational. I don't think you can ask for much more than that when so many movies are trash today. If people decide that they dislike the movie, they should evaluate why. It was gory because slavery was gory. It was depressing and cruel because slavery was depressing and cruel. It had an unrealistic ending because Quentin Tarantino wrote it.

If you can't handle the heat, then get out the damn kitchen.

Killer Joe

I've been waiting to see it since it came out back in the summer. The problem was it was a limited release or something. I'm not sure what they call it in the movie biz but the result was that I couldn't see it anywhere I lived. Then I moved to Arkansas right before the fall started and... well, it's Arkansas. I had better chance seeing Satan skiing in Arkansas than seeing Killer Joe in Arkansas.

It was released on the On Demand cable systems recently; I watched it last night.

Killer Joe was awesome.

It was originally written for the stage by Tracy Letts. It showed Off-Broadway for 9 months in 1998. The story takes place in small-town Texas; trailers, dogs on chains, cars on cinder blocks, the whole bit. Everything looks and feels a little behind the times even though it is set in the present day: the way people dress is modest, the cars they drive are old and make noise, everybody knows everybody. The family (stepmom, father, sister, and brother) is the focus of the story. The stepmom is a floozy and the dad is an obtuse, brawny mechanic who doesn't realize his wife's infidelity. The daughter is a pretty, teenaged girl who seems slow but is very observant. Her brother, who is older, is a Class A screw up who owes someone money and comes to his family to figure out a way to resolve his debt.

What immediately impressed me was the realism. Where in a Tarantino film, you get real settings and characters that look real. You also get a sort of cartoonish script full of hyperboles and clumsy pauses. It's good. But it feels like a movie. Killer Joe has the real look and the feel. The lines of the characters sound natural and typical. They say humdrum, mindless things. They make meaningless conversation and curse a lot. It made the movie slow but believable. Along with the 'real' aspect of the movie came the violence. It was graphic, yes. But something about the way it was achieved elicited an emotional reaction from me; something that felt sorry for characters or at times indifferent. It wasn't like Tarantino's machine gun Hitler scene in Inglorious Basterds. That was just funny.

The depth of the characters is what I noticed next. The family all had instances when they interacted with each other on individual levels as well as in their family unit. So you got to see each of their versions of affection, panic, manipulation, idiocy, and succumbing to pressures of people and situations.

Matthew McConnaughey gave a totally captivating performance. He was an odd and calculating yet charming and handsome predator. You had no choice but to pay attention to his time in front of the camera.

I liked the use of colors both on the characters and in their environments. They were not necessarily indicative of unspoken plot secrets but they made things visually interesting and supported some of the personality traits of the characters. The cinematography/screenplay was nice because it kept the "play" aspect of the story intact. During the crucial scenes of the movie you could see multiple characters in one still shot, how they contributed to the scene, and how the set aided those reactions.

The movie has surprises. The end is interesting. The music is okay. The only thing that I would change is the presence of the sister and brother's biological mom. The movie was hard to follow at one point, and not for any intentional reason for all I can tell.

I'm sad it took me so long to see it but not regretful in the least bit that I did.