I have to say there’s something about the sound of this that cries out for collaboration (and in general, it just sounds awesome), but I decided that those names together really are better suited for the purposes of me interviewing her for The Glass, so, something great still came out of it!
Tift Merritt, as you know, is a wonderful singer-songwriter that has garnered wonderful praise and has made 6 albums in the last 10 years (two of which were live), and even though her music is described by some people as alt-country or alt-folk, during this particular chat you’ll see where she really stands on that.
As you may also know, Tift has been collaborating with concert pianist Simone Dinnerstein (whom I also interviewed) and recently performing several concerts together giving audiences many great perspectives on the connections between a classical style and a folk style of music, and places in-between as well. As I write this, they are working on a CD of this music. Read the rest of this entry »
Hilary Hahn and Friends:
Benefit for Direct Relief International
Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn, NY
March 28th, 2011
“And now, some Bach!”
Something that became sort of a running joke of the night, but the night in question was a fund-raiser for something that was anything but a laughing matter: The disaster in Japan. This event was the last of four shows (Held in different parts of the country: Maryland, Virgina, Georgia, and New York) that Hilary had put on in lieu of her canceled Japanese tour. Rather than performing in Japan, she was performing for them.
The Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO (Being a native of NY, I’m embarrassed that I was unaware this was a regional acronym), Brooklyn, was the best place to have this show for several reasons: the artistic and worldly atmosphere, its clientele, and the acoustics. I was pleased to be in its presence.
The show, in general, was a cultural mash-up of acoustic music, its instruments consisting of violin, guitar, mandolin, and vocals.
Hilary Hahn performed unaccompanied classical violin (Bach’s Partita #1 in B minor, BWV 1002, broken up into 2 halves), and also accompanied the folk stylings of singer-songwriter Caleb Stine (Like Hilary, a Baltimore native and a longtime fixture of that region’s music scene) as well as turning over the spotlight to him and the other players of the night, Josh Ritter and Chris Thile.
Clockwise from top-left: Josh Ritter (The dog wasn’t at the show), Chris Thile, Caleb Stine
If I had to list my favorite moments, all of Hilary’s are on the list, given the only spotlight music she had planned was the 1st Partita (Played brilliantly), and the Sarabande from the 2nd Partita. It almost seemed like Hilary was a guest performer at her own show, but eventually I took that more as a message that the night wasn’t just about her. And she was very wise and modest in purveying that message.
The other sets were all great. Chris Thile, incidentally, is a powerhouse if you’ve never seen him live. He plays like a man possessed, and perhaps invokes a Jimi Hendrix of the mandolin. Other highlights were Josh Ritter’s “The Curse” (Accompanied masterfully by Thile, in the Hilary Hahn role this time around), and, what was sure to be a time-warp moment for me, Hilary and Chris Thile’s duet of Bela Fleck’s “Down In the Swamp”.
They’d played this together previously at the CD release party for her Paganini Concerto CD (And simultaneously for Thile’s “How To Grow a Woman From The Ground” CD) also held in NY back in 2006. It was quite a great thing to see a classically-trained violinist playing fiddle music, and it was equally great to see her do it again, this time wearing high heels.
A few silly moments: a) Hilary getting up on tippy-toes to make the intro announcements into the mike (The stagehands never seem to remember she’s a bit smaller than the boys. Similar moment came at the Metropolitan concert w/Josh Ritter when she went to speak, she joked that they should have gotten her a hydraulic lift). b) Hilary introduced the Partita with “And now, some Bach”. Chris played a mandolin version of the E Major Preludio,
prefacing that with “And now, some Bach” (Even though she was sitting directly above me on the 2nd level, Chris wanted Hilary to leave to spare him from embarrassment in playing Bach badly in front of an expert! Hilary responded “Just play it!”; For the record, he did a great job). When she came back to the stage, Hilary proceeded with the 2nd half of the b minor Partita and announced “And now, some more Bach”. c) Josh Ritter’s segment had him joking that in the lake under the floor there were poisonous fish. When Hilary came back on to play with Chris, she made reference to the recently-escaped Egyptian Cobra from the Bronx Zoo, and that she hoped it wouldn’t be charmed out of the water by the duet performance.
Hilary did bring the mood back to reality at the show’s end with words from the heart about the disaster, and she spoke about her experiences in the nation of Japan, and what the culture and artistic community of that country mean to her (As well as educating us about Direct Relief International, the fund to which the show’s proceeds went), and followed that up with the Bach D minor Sarabande as a tribute to the victims.
One last encore: Bob Dylan’s “Blowing In the Wind”, with Thile, Stine, and Hahn. Hilary could be seen singing a little bit at the end of the song. Caleb had been encouraging her to do this, and I don’t know if this was in response to that, or this was her getting the song in her head the way that “Der Erlkonig” gets into her head when she plays that as a solo violin piece. In any event, it was beautiful to see it happen.
A very simple but telling quote from Hilary Hahn, a lady whose livelihood depends on what people that are buying the CDs and coming to the concerts think of the music. She uttered these words while describing to a listener/fan on one of her YouTube videos how she feels about the academic aspects of the Schoenberg Violin Concerto. She also happened to say this to me at a CD release party 3 years ago (When we were in a noisy atmosphere and you couldn’t hear yourself think) after I had awkwardly expressed that I didn’t care for the Schoenberg Concerto (For the record, it grew on me since then). Perhaps in her mind it is always “just music”; I know by that statement she really meant the music speaks in an emotional language that goes beyond the restricted lines and numbers of time signatures of the printed theory on every piece of paper, and that it speaks to people that can’t even read music the way she and so many gifted musicians can. But it’s not just music, it’s much more.
Loving classical music like I do, I don’t know how normal it is for people to be as ardent a fan of one or two soloists/singers/conductors in particular, but I knew that one day when I was CD window shopping (Imagine doing that now!) back in 2002, I was struck by the CDs of Hilary’s, thinking “A nice girl that plays really nice music?”. At that time it seemed rather inconceivable, but after checking out her music it was clear Hilary was no pop star.
I think the first thing about her playing I noticed was on her recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto. The 3rd movement marked “Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace”, she played the leading phrase with more legato than what I was used to hearing.
I’m not really sure when it was that I went from fan to überfan, but after having seen HH live several times, perhaps it was at a CD release event in NY when she performed with mandolinist/singer-songwriter/composer Chris Thile (Nickel Creek, Punch Brothers) that I was really transformed. As well as great classical pieces by Bach, Ysaye, and Tartini (She played a reading of The Devil’s Trill that received a standing ovation), she also performed music with Chris Thile that ranged from her own classical style to folk and bluegrass.
After having seen this and a video of her indie-rock performance with Trail of Dead, I was convinced Hilary Hahn could do anything. I even flew to Chicago to attend The Ravinia Festival in 2007 to see her collaborative concert with Josh Ritter, and I was convinced that missing out on that would be a mistake and that there wouldn’t be another opportunity to see them working together (I was wrong, of course, as they announced the Met date for the following April).
The other side of all of this, I must point out, is that Hilary was also bringing attention to these other performers. I had never heard of Chris Thile until I saw him that night. I barely knew who Josh Ritter was. I think I knew Trail of Dead from at least one Conan show from the nineties, but I certainly would not have checked any of it out without her influence (BTW, after she had suggested him at the end of her Ravinia set, I am very glad that I checked out Gabriel Kahane, whose compositional style defies genre; The dark-humored “Craigslistlieder” is his masterpiece).
Before I knew it, I was looking for clips from around the world of Hilary Hahn on TV in both performance and interview. Some of those clips are on YouTube, but I did actually purchase one of her German TV appearances and was able to see how advanced her fluency in German is. Astonishing, and, at the same time, great feelings of inadequacy come over me as I can barely count to 10 in German. Of course, I sometimes forget Hilary had been taught the language as a child.
I felt that the best way to channel my überfan-dom was to cobble together a DVD-R compilation (Just for viewing fun only) of various clips of her music, her interviews and silly moments that runs 3 hours and change, looking something like a director’s cut of a documentary film. I do wish that somebody would make such a film someday, but if the creator of that film isn’t me, I’d love to sign on as a technical advisor.
The silliness of Hilary Hahn is easily captured in various clips like her own YouTube videos where she can be seen singing “Happy Birthday” to Arnold Schoenberg in the style of Marilyn Monroe, or in a web extra clip made for the now-defunct Danish TV program “The 11th Hour” where she is putting on her own puppet show with hand puppets in the available studio from some unknown Danish kiddie show (BTW, anybody happen to know what that show was? I’m curious!). Even on a radio show for WGBH Boston she couldn’t resist doing a vocal imitation of a guinea pig.
Coming back to the live performances, I saw HH perform a recital with Valentina Lisitsa at Purchase College in NY in 2009. A cute moment occurred when the venue officials forgot to bring out the chair for the page-turner. Hilary was at the wings waiting for someone to hand her the chair, and when someone finally did, she sprinted across the stage to the piano holding the chair in one hand and her bow and violin in the other. Did I mention this was while she was wearing a long-hemmed stage dress and probably really nice shoes?
Her performance style during this show was apparent to me that she has, at times, the movement and depth of a dancer when she plays. It was especially during one of the Ives Sonatas (Of which 3 were played that night), that Hilary appeared to have ended up holding her bow up in some kind of pose when the music paused in mid-phrase, and it reminded me of interpretive dance. Whether she really is organizing these things in such a fashion or it is all just second-nature, I’m not sure, as I’ve never heard Hilary address this.
By now, I have seen Hilary Hahn in performance many times over in the last 7 years, and it has been a pleasure to see such a wonderful performer continue to grow as an artist. Having seen her play again recently in both a symphonic performance at Carnegie Hall (Performing the Pulitzer Prize-winning Higdon Violin Concerto) and yet another recital at the beautiful Strathmore of North Bethesda, MD, where I had to take in her interpretation of George Antheil’s 1st Violin Sonata. By the way, just want to add that Hilary Hahn, despite what some schmoe says in print somewhere, is not a freak of nature, and her choices of program music, whether it’s from the baroque, classical, or later periods, are not second-tier, and he should know she performed that show under the weather and impeccably so.
Hilary Hahn continues to entertain, inspire, educate, and even amuse me as an artist and a person.
The Glass is an online webpage for giving people an opportunity to see the arts world both through my words and the words of the artists themselves. On this page I hope to also give the cross-section of audiences an opportunity to read up on artists they possibly haven’t discovered ... Continue reading »
