Revolutionary Poetry: 长征组歌

2009 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Accordingly, this year’s art and cultural scene in Beijing has been inundated with activities with an unmistakably revolutionary theme. One such activity is the revival of the monumental 长征组歌, a Liederkreis that poetically draws up the poignant history of the Chinese Red Army’s Long March between 1934 and 1936.

The cycle starts with Bidding Farewell (告别), a serious number portraying the scene where marchers parted with their families to fight for a greater cause. In the middle of the cycle, Traversing the Snow Mountains and Grasslands (过雪山草地) depicts the great difficulty when the marchers scaled the rugged mountains in the brutal continental winter. The cycle ends with a predictably upbeat but still stunningly rapturous finale, set at Gansu’s Huining (甘肃会宁), where the choir tutti praises Chairman Mao and the Communist Party. This struggle-to-victory story flow is understandably similar to that of Flower Girl, the DPRK revolutionary opera that I attended and wrote about last year.

In keeping with tradition, the musicians wear red army uniforms (红军服) and straw sandals during the performance of the cycle. The evening’s performance also includes recitals of a few revolutionary classics, including Our Soldiers (咱当兵的人; video) and Motherland (祖国慈祥的母亲; video).

As someone who does not regularly tune into CCTV’s entertainment programming that caters to the patriotic crowd, I must confess I am not at all familiar with revolutionary music — the genre. I am attracted to and intrigued by last night’s performance not least because the performance is supposedly a defining moment in this year’s gargantuan slate of anniversary activities, but because I like to wean on and study more about this patriotic culture that grows beyond what is parochially required of all citizens in China. After all, the tickets are not cheap; and no one (at least for people like me) is forced to attend the concert. Still, judging by the way the audience connects with the music and its stars, it is obvious to me that: (1) many audience members are intimately familiar with the music’s genre and can readily recite most of the lyrics by memory; and (2) some of these stars, including Liu Bin (刘斌; bio, in Chinese) and Geng Lianfeng (耿莲凤; bio, in Chinese), are genuine heavyweights in the genre of revolutionary music, much like Pavarotti and Sutherland in opera. They draw a rabid fan following – as evidenced by fans’ enthusiastic reception upon their entrance on stage. They issue their own CDs (revolutionary music usually has its separate section at CD shops all over Beijing), run their music troupes, write new music (咱当兵的人, which was used by President Jiang Zemin to inspect the line during 1999’s military parade, was written by Liu Bin) and star regularly in CCTV’s plethora of entertainment programming. This culture is something that I am only recently introduced to; in fact, I am eager to find out if this culture exists all across China, or only in the unabashedly patriotic fishbowl of Beijing.

I was grateful to find one friend willing to attend this amazing performance with me. Our attendance was quite improbable: considering that most of these sing-along attendees — some in their uniforms — were in their 50s or 60s, we were conspicuous by virtue of our relatively young age. In the end however, we, or at least I, realized that well-written lyrics and melodic tunes find no bounds in affecting the audience and bringing the audience back for a brief ride back to history’s past.

Anne-Sophie Mutter in Beijing

Anne-Sophie Mutter has never moved me to tears. Until yesterday.

I have heard ASM a handful of times, most recently a few years back in the U.S. before her repertorial shift to focus more on pre-Romantic string works. By most accounts, she has few peers when it comes to nailing down the technicality and artistry of Romantic-period and Impressionist works, including Tchaikovsky’s marvel, and Sarasate’s lyricism. But with her technical achievements so flawless and her performance so consistently, emotionally juiced, I wonder if she could also rise as a star on the other side of the spectrum of great violinists: the kind who has the cerebral clarity and intellectual acumen to tackle the subtleties hidden in classical period pieces. Sure, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was exuberant (and it was one of two pieces she performed last night; the other was Bach’s Magnificat, BWV1042 ), but it seems best amplified when performed (at least also) with the kind of intellectual seriousness that, for example, the legendary Isaac Stern would bestow upon his each and every melodic phrase, and in it, each and every played note — bringing a composition so alive as to genuinely connect with the audience.

Obviously, I went into the concert hall with trepidation, knowing that anything other than an exceptional experience would be a disappointment. Like any great violinist would do, she imposed her authority on her chamber players as soon as she basked in her spotlight. Soon enough, Bach’s notes gracefully filled the Concert Hall of the National Centre for Performing Arts, each with determination and nobility. Her string work was luxurious, with neither a slight feeling of decorative impurity nor excessive oomph. The only flaw was perhaps that she looked, it seems to me, a little stiff going into the glissando passages in the middle of Allegro non troppo. But as ASM worked through the Bach, she more than redeemed herself, ending before intermission with a joyous, jubilant Allegro assai that galloped towards a rapturous applause.

ASM looked noticeably pleased after her Bach, and that seemed to build onto her confidence in her post-intermission Vivaldi. ASM tackled the Four Seasons with the same elegance, care, and grace that she so effortlessly displayed ever since she was a teenage phenomenon. A few absent notes notwithstanding, she was magnificent and, more importantly, in full control of the Vivaldi and Trondheim Solistene, the excellent Norwegian chamber orchestra. Her expression with Winter’s Largo provided ample evidence that ASM is not just a technically masterful violinist, but an expressive and intellectual artist that renders each note into part of a lyrical conversation with her audience.

Her composure was a sign of her experience, not of her age (she will be 45 in June). Considering that she was somewhat handicapped by a majority Chinese audience who was not exactly respectful: ringing cellphones, what seemed to be cameras hitting stubbornly onto the hall’s wooden floor (and why were they being fidgeted in a place that prohibited photography, anyway?!), and what seemed to be a bizarre, one-second-long dog howl (don’t get me started on why and how it happened), I have no doubt that she delivered her goods.

But delivering her goods was not why I went to an ASM concert, and certainly not why I was so moved as to shed a tear. After a regurgitation of Summer’s Presto as a cookie-cutter, uninspiring encore, I was ready to call it a night and leave. But after the sixth curtain call (and the third after the first encore), ASM walked up to the stage, and hinted to the concertmaster as if she was going to dictate something unusual. And she did. She turned to the audience, and, with her flawless English and terse to the point, she dedicated Bach’s Air (Suite No. 3, BWV1068 ) to the victims of the Sichuan earthquake. At that very instance when she finished her dedication, there was a slight commotion in the audience (with probably a few, unable to understand her, trying to get/guess what ASM just said). Soon thereafter, she engaged into Bach’s monumental, albeit perennially overplayed, Magnum Opus. Overplayed always, but not last night. The majestic tranquility of ASM’s air almost betrayed (or perhaps faultlessly portrayed?) the subject matter to which the piece was dedicated. The legato was one of the longest in my musical experience, not least because, as ASM ran with her fingers, a seemingly neverending surge of sad, somber images came rushing through my mind. I could also, right at that beginning moment, recall a Dallas Symphony concert I attended soon after 9/11, when the mood was similarly dreary, but because Maestro Andrew Litton picked DSCH’s 11 to reflect President Bush’s resolve, that night’s audience could not help but felt a little resilient and upbeat with DSCH’s faithful chimes and glorious symphonic march to the symphonic finale. Had ASM played something along the lines of DSCH 11’s majestic, monumental ending, her effort would have been valiant, and almost entirely predictable (and in fact, that was what I was expecting, given the not-to-be-soon-forgotten hindsight of the Chinese audience’s preference for big, optimistic endings, such as DPRK’s performance last month). But not Bach’s Air. And ASM’s Air started where it ended — morne et sombre, tranquility as an inevitable prelude to death, picture perfection as an antonymous juxtaposition to a harrowing episode of human tragedy. Bach’s Air described Sichuan in a way that Litton’s DSCH did not, in a way that, as it seems to me, was humane, genuine, and so calm as to condense the enormity of thousands of lost lives into three minutes of haunting stillness. I was totally plugged into that imagery. And right there, she nailed me.

And that was the very reason why I shed a tear.

Digesting 長生殿

長生殿 is a Kunju piece I don’t know much about, so it was a giant leap of faith to subscribe myself into four consecutive evenings of its performances, 3+ hours each evening. That surely complicated my already jam-packed schedule with 8+ hours in the office and another 3-4 hours manning other non-profit stuff I’m active with.

But then, this was not just another rendition of 長生殿. According to the program notes, 長生殿 has not been staged in Beijing in its entirety in the past 300-plus years, and the art politburo made it a point that 長生殿 was to return to the Imperial City in its monumental glory in the year when modern China is to open for the whole world to witness (rumors had it that Shanghai Kunju Troupe, the company staging the Kunju, was politely asked to move its performance schedule in Beijing to coincide with the pre-Olympics art schedule). In any case, to play up 長生殿’s return, the entire cast was even arranged to present themselves in a lavish ceremony at the Imperial Granary to pay homage to 老郎神, the assumed spiritual guardian of Chinese dramatic arts.

After four intense evenings of performances, I must say I am, more than ever, intrigued by the art form, but would probably stop short of saying that I am safely a lifelong convert. Nevertheless, I am quite hooked by its complex singing style, its elaborate costumes and makeups, its adroit limp artistry, and its tremendously efficient motion-as-metaphor stage arrangements. I find the stage in Kunju a bit more thoroughly exploited than the stage in Jingju, especially the use of diagonal movements, counter movements, mirroring juxtapositions, and other tricks that render the experience more fulfilling, dynamic, and wholesome.

I will regret making the following analogy in haste, but I’ll attempt so anyway: if Peking Opera is a fast ride on a Porsche that promises a rush of adrenaline and a taste of emotive exuberance, Kunju is an elegant experience in a Jaguar, not merely entertaining and not out-of-bounds, but comfortable, comforting, and feeling just like home.

A follow-up to a night at the opera

Using my Nokia 6280, I managed to take a couple of photos inside the opera house. Of course, the photo quality was mediocre but my phone camera was all that I had at the time. The first photo was taken during the final curtain call after nearly three hours of singing, and the second photo was taken when the percussionist was packing up her snare drum. As far as I can tell, she could rip a mean snare:

A different kind of opera

Last weekend I attended a production of “Flower Girl”, an opera staged at the National Theatre by a North Korean opera troupe.

“Flower Girl” focuses on the plight of a Korean family whose fortunes were ravaged by the selfish behavior of a landowner and his family, saved only at the end by the glory of the revolution (i.e. the Marxist-Lenin communist revolution). Without a doubt, “Flower Girl” was designed to be a partisan, propagandist surrogate whose message was simple and easy to understand. By the time the opera ended, the only question left unanswered, as it seems to me, was how soon (or not!) the supposedly inspired audience would arm themselves and join the revolution.

According to the program notes, the opera was commissioned by and written in the 30s by Kim Il-Sung, the founding father of the DPRK and father of North Korea’s current leader, Kim Jong-Il. The Chinese public got their first taste of the opera through a film version of the opera, which was briefly released in the mainland in the early 70s and was well received. Since then, the opera has made various rounds in the mainland, playing mainly for small, strategically selected crowds (i.e. the PLA, young communist brigades etc.). It seems to me that while the opera has gained Chinese fans over the years, but because it has never been widely staged, it has never gained widespread prominence in the country’s psyche. Over the years, the opera has been reedited by and for its chief patron, the Kim family, probably to perfect its underlying proletarian and revolutionary messages. To me, such messages were unmistakable: the landowners are(were) evil, Jesus Christ offers(-ed) no helping hand, and the proletarian revolution is(was) every Korean’s ultimate salvation. The surtitles would punch out verses upon verses that sing the virtues of proletarian values, all the while ripping apart property rights and capitalistic misadventures. I felt like a cliff-side rock, looking helplessly as rapturous waves of such messages soldiered towards me in an endless repetition, finally engulfing and obliterating me, as if obliging me to accept its imminent and inevitable victory.

Politics aside, the opera was, strictly speaking, not an opera, because the main singers were given microphones to sing with. Unusual in an opera, a non-acting choir located on both sides of the orchestra sang not only the chorus, but more significantly the part of the heavenly voice seeking to explain everything to the audience — for example, who to blame for all the poor people’s plight (the landowner) and who to get credit for saving the poor (the revolution). Without a sliver of a doubt, Kim Il-Sung was to live vicariously and eternally through the united voice of the choir –an arrangement that, in itself, was a fitting, if not accidental, metaphor. Operatically, it was somewhat difficult to pinpoint exactly where “Flower Girl” would fit. The music was comprised of a chain of short tunes, each of which was tonally structured like a romantic aria, but each also woven with more sincere philosophical discourse and less floral sentimentality. “Flower Girl” is, thus, as it seems to me, Wagnerian in its content but romantic in its delivery. The singing was superb, despite the horrifying presence of the microphone. The production direction was amply satisfying, especially a prison scene whereby prisoners, understood to be locked down by the autocratic class, thumped through the prison ground as if they were laboring mindlessly in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. In the end, I was convinced that the mezzo soprano (the protagonist) and probably a few others could have sung their entire roles without the help of any electronics. Another mezzo soprano (the protagonist’s mother) also sang superbly, and I found it somewhat tragic that her role was small and limiting.

The highlight of the evening was at the end, when I made my way to the orchestral pit and shook hands with a couple of musicians. I could hardly speak Korean (and I would assume they could hardly understand a word of Chinese –though I could be wrong), but I found no such need to communicate verbally. We exchanged smiles in a way that spoke a thousand words: theirs, being appreciative of a keen audience and the sincerity of those who chose to stay behind to greet and thank the musicians; and ours, being thankful for a lovely spring evening imbued with fine music, talented singing and, most importantly, the North Korean’s rare but priceless presence. For different reasons, the night was special to each involved. I couldn’t help but felt the urge to summarize the evening with a tinge of romantic sentimentality: that while the exchange of human warmth was a small gesture between a few men (and women), it was a giant gesture for all of mankind, in an act that verily shows how humanity by way of musical and facial proxy can transcend language, politics, ideology. No word needed spoken, for music and facial gestures cultivated the seeds of understanding and mutual admiration. That moment was, to me, the singularly most heartwarming and unique experience I have ever had in an opera house.

CCTV idol

I am not a huge fan of reality TV, though when I was still living in the U.S. I used to watch Dancing with the Stars and The Apprentice. My viewing habit hasn’t changed much since moving to China, although I would watch reality shows from time to time, to catch a break from my otherwise mundane schedule. But I jumped at the chance when I was offered to sit in a live broadcast of a nation-wide singing competition produced by CCTV.

CCTV is not mainly known for its reality TV shows: the champ goes to Hunan Television, for its brazen copycat (but immensely popular) American Idol-like shows. But there is no doubt that CCTV’s 青歌赛 (Youth Singing Competition –my translation) is influential. Winners are often given spots to sing at one of those Spring Festival shows watched by every one and their mother during Chinese New Year –attaining the kind of prestige and glory that are hard to quantify. Equally importantly, these winners (and many contestants with a coattail of bulletin-board buzz long after the show) carry on by performing in public events, for regional television stations etc. Doors are open by virtue of “having made it” on CCTV.

The show is divided into various categories, including pop singing and ethnic music. There’s a category that is difficult to translate: 民族唱法, which I would liberally translate as anything that has something to do with Chinese culture (most contestants choose to belt out a nationalist song; many others sing songs that praise China’s nature, abundant resources, kind people etc. — you get the idea). I was invited to two live studio broadcasts over the past week, and I must say while there was nothing out of the ordinary, it was memorable, if only because I got to see the inside of CCTV’s headquarters in the west side of town before they move to the new OMA building in Chaoyang.

The format is not similar to American Idol –for one, there is no heart-ripping, reality-checking speeches by Simon Cowell. Contestants would come out and sing their song, and then would go through an interactive session whereby contestants are either asked to tell a story (from a selection of topics), answer a few culture-related questions, and/or do melodic dictation –all in front of a live television audience. For the singing, the contestants are judged by 10 judges, each of whom would give a maximum of 99 points. A maximum of one point would be given for a contestant’s performance during the interactive session. Needless to say, no serious contestant would spend his/her life trying to ace this interactive session, although it is this part that seemed to glue the television audience, if not for the heart-warming stories (a lot were about how contestants wished to thank their deceased mothers or fathers or teachers) or for the comic responses (especially in melodic dictation, where a seemingly good dictation would deteriorate into something between a jazzy improvisation and a melodically challenged fiasco) then certainly for the cultural commentator’s incisive social and cultural commentary. Most contestants are serious contenders (no pretenders or jokers), although my sampling points were skewed because I went at the final elimination rounds (the competition would begin at regional TV stations, who would then send their winners to Beijing for a final round of competition). Since the competition is only held once every two years, it is considered to be the Olympic of Chinese singing competition (if not for the follow-on lucrative commercial contracts, then certainly for the glory of winning a CCTV competition and the opportunity to be invited to sing at the Chinese New Year TV bash). A closer look at the contestants certainly reveals that while a majority of them were sent to the final round by regional television stations, many others were sent by government agencies (the “danwei”s), including the army, the navy, various music/art universities etc.

My conversation with a friend who has intimate knowledge about the show (and the necessary connection to sneak me in) revealed that many of these “danwei”s would send their representatives to these competitions mainly for bragging rights. She said that “danwei”s actually make a big deal out of a winner sent from their cohort. When I asked my friend why there was no representation from private enterprises, she explained that they just didn’t have to privilege of bypassing the “regionals” to go straight to the finals, as would be the case for those representatives from “danwei”s. While the arrangement may seem patrician and patronizing, she defended the practice by saying, to which I agree, that the competition within the “danwei”s to search for a winner is, by most standards, even more, not less, strenuous than the competition at a regional competition, simply because of the military-style training and the resources. Private companies simply don’t have the time and effort to train and nurture a final-ready contestant, and one may argue that “bypassing” the regionals is not by itself patronizing because the “bypassed” alternative is probably even more, not less, strenuous. And then there’s the dreaded cultural reality: face — a “danwei” simply can’t just send a mediocre contestant up for embarrassment on the national stage. Good enough is simply not good enough for these “danwei”s, and the superior quality of their representatives is the number one and only necessary testament that my friend’s explanation was adequate to me.

These idols aren’t necessarily commercially viable, especially when what they sing isn’t something that someone can hum to or follow through at a karaoke joint (some of these 民族歌 are scored to shock and awe with rapid firing of high notes). But these idols will have attained national fame by standing atop the CCTV stage and, by being there and performing well, will have made whom they represent proud. At the end of the day, anybody can sing, but only a few can sing on the CCTV stage and be given an opportunity to sing to hundreds of millions of people. Now, that’s bragging rights commercial success can’t buy.

Le roi d’Ys

Édouard Lalo is well known for his string compositions, for a good reason: he was an accomplished violin and viola player himself. His Spanish Symphony, a violin concerto, is considered to be an important rite of passage for many aspiring violinists.

His opera compositions, however, are less well known. Le Roi d’Ys, considered to be Lalos’ most well-scored and sophisticated opera, is rarely staged. (The Met, for example, staged Le Roi six times in its 120+ years history –and these six were performed in a single season: 1921-1922.) This rarity was the primary reason why I was excited to learn that Le Roi would be staged this week at the National Theatre in Beijing, in a production co-produced by the National Theatre and the Theatre du Capitole de Toulouse.

Last night I went to the second of four Le Roi performances this weekend. Honestly, I don’t have much exposure to Lalo’s work prior to last night, and I was somewhat surprised by the Wagnerian nature of the composition. By the second Act, I was convinced why Lalo’s work remains in the back bin of any company’s repertoire: one simply can’t market a Wagnerian feature under the banner of a French composer. The two concepts just don’t mix…selling Le Roi, as it seems to me, is like selling existential philosophy at a burlesque factory. I am not trying deliberately to make a direct and parallel analogy here: my point, however, is that no easy way exists to fuse the two perceptibly differing concepts into one coherent, marketable product.

But last night’s production was as close to achieving something monstrous as I could possibly imagine. Even so, the production was not devoid of misses: the singing, by most standards, was lackluster. The tenor singing the role of Mylio was simply not up for the challenge. His voice was weak and unable to project adequately to all corners of the hall (I sat in a perfectly located orchestra center seat but felt that his delivery was timid, particularly towards the end when Lalo obviously expected Mylio to be brazen and bold). Rozenn, a soprano role, delivered technically but was incapable of establishing any emotional connection with the audience (perhaps she was merely effectuating the role, which was supposed to be simple but oblivious to most of what went on?). It was due to the miscast of both Mylio and Rozenn that I found Margared, a mezzo-soprano role, to be sumptuously fulfilling, perhaps simply by comparison. The villainous role was hardly bel canto in nature (after all, Le Roi is, at least to me, Wagnerian), but the singer was able to deliver a top quality voice that not only danced powerfully with the orchestral score, but invited the audience (or just me?) to feel her villainous rage.

But Margared alone was not enough to save the day. What made Le Roi work, or rather, this Le Roi work was the production stage. The set includes a beautifully painted, two-story stage with plenty of ornamental details and fabulous engravings. The opera also calls for a dramatic flooding scene in the final scene. Common sense would dictate that no production would actually flood the stage with real water, but would only metaphorically do so through stage effects (e.g. blue lighting, and/or dancing ribbons) to falsify an imminent tidal surge. But no, the production designer actually flooded the stage, not merely with a few metaphoric buckets but with gallons upon gallons of fresh water gushing from the top of the two-story stage down a central stair piece and onto the stage floor! (The water was, as it seemed to me, then captured by slits across the stage.) It was as magnificent as real elephants in Aida or marching horses in Khovanshchina, except, of course, that this water design was so much more difficult to pull off not merely because of the logistic nightmare of recapturing the water but also of the #1 issue in any stage design: safety.

According to the production notes, the stage seems to be conceptualized and managed by folks at the National Theatre. If anything, this Le Roi set proves that Chinese production designers are world class, and that the Theatre’s mechanics can deliver such a technical marvel, so seemingly unfathomable anywhere else, that the production was saved from mediocrity.

José Carreras recital

I almost missed out on a great opportunity to listen to Carreras because by the time I learned about the recital earlier this week, it was already sold out. If I hadn’t exhausted all my contacts and traded some favors, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to catch one of the finest living opera singers in my lifetime.

The concert: while Carreras has lost some of his range (the highest note he hit all night, if my pitch hasn’t failed me, was a Ab5 –and that was delivered with visible strain), he more than made up with an impassioned, controlled delivery. His intense concentration was amply projected through his voice and, to an even greater extent, his facial emotions. Notwithstanding a few strained high notes, Carreras’ voice oozed with a mature, dutiful yet non-threatening perfection. The dramatic highlight of the evening was a superbly crafted encore piece –Verdi’s Libiamo ne’ lieti calici, together with soprano Po-ching Ip (no, I don’t believe Carreras hit the last Bb…but who cares…the capacity audience, including I, went absolutely berserk after a prolonged, rousing third-last note, the G5). In an earlier encore (he did a total of three encores), Carreras first confounded the audience by revealing what seemed to be a hastily scribbled cheat sheet, and then turned the house into a pandemonium when he began singing to the tune of “在那遙遠的地方”, in accented (but arguably well spelled-out?) Mandarin Chinese. While Carreras was taking breaks on backstage between his 10 arias of the evening, Ip (who was a classmate of mine at music school in HK, over 10 years ago) filled in with memorable performances, including Puccini’s O mio babbino caro and, as an encore, Gounod’s Je veux vivre dans ce reve.

To end, a little about the performance venue: it was held at the white-themed Concert Hall at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (or The Egg, as it is affectionately known). Similar to the opera house (which I visited two weeks ago when it first opened), the concert hall’s interior is subtly tasteful and, thank goodness, without the kind of excessive exuberance that seems to define the modern Chinese taste. My only complaint: the existence of pieces of glass-like material separating the grid lights from the ambiance. When these grid lights hit the side of this glass-like material, a magnified refraction is casted on the side of the concert hall. Because the grid is suspended through wires from the ceiling, it could move, if ever so slightly, enough to cause the magnified refraction to move, in a musically miscued and visually annoying manner.

My Tribute to Oscar

December 2007 would be my first December since 1996 where I would not have listened to Oscar Peterson’s Christmas  album (1995 Telarc) at least once before folks around me started belching out Auld Lang Syne. I bought the Peterson recording shortly before Christmas in the year of 1996, and have since then bestowed a prerogative thereupon to entertain me, ahead of everything else, in the month of December. That recording, perhaps Peterson’s best-selling and most accessible recording of seasonal music, is a gorgeous yet subtly effusive piece of art work that has defined many a December for me in ways that not even ecclesiastic traditions and conventions have.

But 2007 is not exactly a normal year for me. 2007 was the year I uprooted myself from America, where I have spent a great majority of my past 11 years, and moved to Beijing, where I now reside. I settled down in Beijing with trepidation and a great level of uncertainty. I also arrived with one suitcase, with just enough space for my clothes and not nearly enough to include any of my CDs (including my Petersons). For whatever reason, though my iPod has enough music to keep me entertained for a month without a single song repeat, none in my digital collection has anything to do with Christmas, and certainly nothing of the Peterson recording that I have been listening to every December in the past decade.

The above revelation, still, would not begin to describe how terribly I feel right now. As I posted earlier, Peterson passed away this Christmas Eve, an irony in timing, as if, not merely to remind me of that Christmas album (disclosure: I certainly was listening to his music, albeit not that specific recording of Christmas music), but also to formalize my guilt for having abandoned his recording this year, and alas, for the first time in more than a decade.

Oscar Peterson, whom I have never met in person, has always been special to me. The first jazz recording that captured my imagination was “We Get Requests”, a light but delightful, controlled execution of popular bossa nova standards such as “Girl from Ipanema” and “Corcovado”. Back in 1993, it was my most perfect introduction to jazz as Peterson, in that recording, was unambiguously deferential to the original bossa nova melodies – thus making the music more accessible –even as he colored them with jubilant but judiciously modest jazz constructions. This bit of discovery came well after I started repeating the tracks, before I had any inkling that the record, as it stands today in history, has its place in jazz history as an exemplary cornerstone of a movement that attempted to bring jazz back to a more polished, tuneful nature after a go-go period of bop, when melodies were often liberally dismantled, dissected and reduced, with abandon, into their most naked and primitive forms before being reconstructed into something else. Because jazz connoisseurs often find such “reconstructions” intellectually appealing, “We Get Requests” is often considered to be harmonic fluff, but the kind of frothy fluff so well made that reminds people of a perfectly executed soufflé in its immaculate, indefectible erection. Just as it takes nothing less than a chef obsessed with precision, restraint and finesse to deliver a lush soufflé beyond compare, it takes nothing less than a musical genius like Peterson to deliver musical numbers as palatable and joyous, yet simple and uncluttered, as those found in “We Get Requests”.

When my taste for jazz was finally mature enough to tackle Peterson’s more progressive works, I knew I was in for a serious treat. Of all of Peterson’s more formulaic, progressive works, I count the series titled “The Exclusively for My Friends” one of my all-time favorites. If metaphorized into painting, the music in that series offered a much larger, freer canvas on which Peterson could execute with more aesthetic flair and technical fervor. Peterson, at least as technically proficient as any other jazz pianist in the history of the music form, had a free roam in this vast, unadulterated land of improvising opportunity, often delivering numbers upon numbers of music that, if readers so indulge me, conjures delirious episodes of synesthesia and orgasmic nirvana. This canvas was where Peterson would unleash his technical and artistic arsenals: augmented arpeggios, catchy leitmotifs, re-harmonization of blues chords, temporal dissonance, block and parallel chords, alteration of dominant functions etc., providing a continuous source of sensory, almost dizzy triggers that allow the audience to drift into Peterson’s personally handcrafted world. Technical dexterity notwithstanding, Peterson’s ability to control dynamics and tempo was another foundation of his artistic mastery, the kind of magical aptitude similar to that perfected by a sorcerer who would wave his wand and control the ebb and flow of the emotional and episodic energy flowing through mortals like us. Peterson’s music flies and glides in a border-less sky of emotional and spiritual possibilities, soaring into the celestial outer-space in Peterson’s sanctioned instances while sharp diving into the abyss in others, thereby creating a sensory roller coaster that leaves an enduring, indelible mark in the audience’s perceptive psyche.

I remember listening to a rare interview of Peterson speaking of how he would prepare before a performance. To Peterson, the only preparation was to feel the depth of the keys, or the extent to which a key needs to be pressed before the hammer butt (which is coupled with the keyboard element) pivots towards the sound-generating string of the instrument. That description, though mechanical, if not also archaic, underlies Peterson’s pure genius: the same question posed to any other musician would probably induce responses such as a few minutes of physical warm-ups with chromatic scales and arpeggios, seat adjustments, a few deep breaths etc. To Peterson, it was merely a brief outreaching action to the keys that allowed them to become a part of him –in a way that seamlessly bound the musician with the musical instrument. This recollection reminds me of a quote by composer Phil Nimmons, a longtime friend of Peterson and a co-producer of Peterson’s “Canadiana Suite”: “The piano is like an extension of [Peterson’s] own physical being.”

I wish in my lifetime, I could say, with neither shame nor moral opprobrium, that the piano is an extension of my physical being. Just like a basketball, in the hands of Michael Jordan, becomes a part of the basketball player until Jordan decides to destine it for the basket, piano keys were completely Peterson’s until he decided to allow them to produce sounds for transmission to human audio nerves. While I have never listened to Peterson in a live concert, I would imagine how the audience, being mortals, would drop their jaws in an unrehearsed yet synchronized manner as they luxuriated in Peterson’s acoustic splendor.

My endless outpour of praise aside, I must contend that some of Peterson’s compositions, including famous ones such as “Place St. Henri”, were, at least to me, more about technical exuberance than emotional connectivity which, I truly believe, is the anchoring hallmark of any jazz composition. “Place St. Henri”, a piece that was slated to portray the vibrant economic and cultural viability in Peterson’s home town of Montreal, seems, at least to me, to glorify breathless technical rigor much more than the artist’s emotional connection with the geographical subject matter. As I read a plethora of obituary tomes (listed below), I wish obit writers would place more emphasis on Peterson’s more enterprising, radical compositions, one such as “Easter Suite”, a magnum opus less known by the public but perhaps one that proves to be critically significant in the history of jazz composition. Commissioned by a British television show and broadcasted nationwide in England on Good Friday, April 24, 1984, the piece has eight movements, each following the events narrated in the corresponding gospel story. While other musicians before Peterson had improvised on top of gospel music, few have exploited a biblical story as a source of improvisational inspiration. In addition, it also seems ironic, if not fundamentally flawed, that a well-known, predictable story in the Bible was re-construed via the free-minded, unpredictable nature of jazz improvisation. Another tidbit that obit writers failed to capture was a part of Peterson’s childhood that was instrumental to Peterson’s development not only as a solo musician but as a part of a jazz collaboration. In cassettes of oral interviews to which I was able to access while I was still an extremely slack (but lucky) student in university, I had a strong impression that Peterson was exposed to collaborative music making and tonal balancing by playing with the rest of his family as his father would gather family members (including Oscar’s sister, who was at one point Peterson’s piano teacher) in weekly jamming sessions where everyone would take turns to play different instruments and produce music in a way that would allow one to be cognizant of the presence of other musicians’ lines.

Peterson’s music will always have a special place in my heart. With reference to classical music, I would characterize Peterson’s playing as Liszt-like, albeit with a jazz flavor –a characterization that was not off the mark as Peterson’s childhood piano teacher was himself a student of the famous Hungarian pianist –while his melodic integrity, punctuated with appropriate improvisational dissonance and rhythmic permutation, was akin to a jazzy parallel to Rachmaninoff’s variations of an original classical theme.

2007 is a calendar year that proves to be one of the most brutal and disheartening for a jazz lover: Carlos Valdez, Cecil Payne, Joe Zawinul (a founder of The Weather Report), Max Roach and Michael Brecker are among those who passed away this year. When Peterson’s name was added to the list, the intensity of any grief must be (and surely is, at least as it seems to me) levitated to levels previously unfathomable. I will always have the music of Oscar Peterson on Christmas Eve, but Christmas Eve will never have the good grace of the legend. Nevertheless, Christmas Eve will always mark the day that my favorite jazz pianist has, appropriately, returned to the musical heaven from which he arrived 82 years ago…from which the invisible hand has, if ever so temporarily, lent him to mortals like us.

Obituaries worth reading: AP, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, CBC News.

Oscar Peterson

This is an immensely sad day for me. Oscar Peterson just died, leaving one of my lifelong dreams –to meet Oscar in person – permanently unfulfilled, at least in my lifetime. Oscar will be sorely missed. Read the news here.