Close your eyes for a moment and picture this familiar scenario: A super-villain is sitting in a high-backed chair, fiendishly stroking a kitten while he tells a momentarily incapacitated super-spy and a handful of hapless goons his current plan for world domination. What music is he listening to as he does this? That’s right, he’s listening to classical music.

Given that this is one of the enduring images we who have chosen this field have had to deal with at least since Wagner, how disappointing was it to open up the newspaper the other day and read that that arch-villain Vladimir Putin had decided to put on an open-air classical music concert in war-torn Syria featuring his good buddy and fellow one-percenter, and also decidedly mediocre cellist, Sergei Roldugin.

I was eating tacos at a great new spot in Uptown when I read this and I actually turned to the guy next to me, shaking the paper in such a way that he couldn’t possibly read it, and said, “Do you believe this shit?!” Naturally he moved to the other side of the restaurant, but I was too distracted to notice. I mean here we have Hitler, at least half of the James Bond villains, Gary Oldman’s character in “The Professional” and Alex DeLarge from “A Clockwork Orange,” just to name a few—and now Putin too? It’s too much.

Obviously we’ll never overcome the image of classical music as the genre of choice for super-villains, but still I’d like to respectfully ask a favor. If you’re a super-villain and you’re thinking of trying to legitimize your recent bombing campaigns by having a concert on a historic landmark, for Pete’s sake call Yanni.

Recently my life abruptly somersaulted between two extreme opposites as I went from living an intensely introspective, rarely leave the house kind of lifestyle in which I spent my days in a feverish haze working constantly on my piano concerto that I’ve spent the last two years on and really need to finish, to walking the runway as a male model at a fashion show.

Yeah, it was weird. In fact you might even think I’m making it up.  I was in such a Barton Fink Life of the Mind haze for so long myself that I also wasn’t sure if it was happening but no, it was all too real.  This is how it came about.

My talented wife runs a successful company that makes bike bags and as such is kind of a superstar in the biking community and she was exhibiting at one of the biggest bike fashion shows in the country and they needed male models and, well, she volunteered me.

It was pretty intense. They did my hair and put makeup on me and gave me clothes to wear and even taught me how to walk down the runway. They couldn’t do anything about my bad posture and general slouchiness or the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking obsessively about how the orchestra relates to the piano in the fourth movement of my concerto but, overall it was surprisingly fun to show off high end bike products for hundreds of serious bike geeks.

Plus I was recognized at the after-party which was a new experience for me. I felt like a superstar.  But now it’s back to my little home studio and the life of the mind.  Oh, there’s John Goodman – what’s he doing here?

French artist and curator Jean Dubuffet coined a term he called art brut, which he defined as “works produced by persons unscathed by artistic culture, where mimicry plays little or no part. These artists derive everything from their own depths and not from the conventions of classical or fashionable art.”

In art brut the expressive content was more important than a glossy finished product; practitioners of art brut walked to the beat of their own drum and never gave a thought as to how their artistic vision fit into larger trends. Art brut would later become known as outsider art, a movement to which Chicago has contributed plenty.

I thought about all of this last month when Henry Threadgill became the first native Chicagoan to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. To me, Threadgill is sort of the ultimate musical equivalent of an outsider artist. Over the last fifty years or so he has built an incredible legacy of uncompromising recordings and compositions that reveal a singular musical vision and he certainly wasn’t thinking about musical trends.

It’s a bit of a surprise, albeit a welcome one, that Threadgill won the Pulitzer; but it’s no surprise that Chicago is home to so many outsider artists and musicians.

And really, reading the definition of outsider art, what other kind of artist would you want to be?

May is always a busy month for classical music as we wrap up our concert seasons and prepare to adjourn to our summer homes to drink port, abuse the help and shoot defenseless animals.

Sadly though, this year I’ll be stuck in the city as my beloved manor burned down last fall during a regrettable flare-gun duel with an impudent young oboist who questioned my knowledge of French Baroque performance practices.

Which admittedly I know nothing about, but still, what the hell? At any rate, here are my favorite upcoming classical music events, sans impudence.

Bernstein and Mahler—Elgin Symphony

I heard an interview with Leonard Bernstein many years ago in which he spoke about conducting the music of Mahler in the composer’s hometown of Vienna. The musicians hated the music and Bernstein could hear them muttering “scheiße musik”—“shitty music”—under their breath throughout the rehearsals.

Nowadays the general consensus is that Mahler’s music is quite a lot better than shitty and, in large part we have Bernstein to thank for it. The Elgin Symphony closes out their season with a brilliant pairing of Lenny’s first symphony, inspired by the angst-ridden life of the prophet Jeremiah, with Mahler’s Symphony Number 4, containing a musical depiction of a child’s vision of heaven.
May 1 at 2:30pm, Hemmens Cultural Center, 45 Symphony Way, Elgin; $30-$65

Flutronix
At this point people have tried blending classical music with everything from rock and reggae to drum and bass, usually with limited success. Which is a nice way of saying that it sucked. But flutists extraordinaire Nathalie Joachim and Allison Loggins-Hull have created an undeniably interesting performance aesthetic with Flutronix, a “blend of classical music, hip-hop, electronic programming and soulful vocals reminiscent of neo-R&B stars like Erykah Badu.”
May 10 at 6:00pm, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago; $12 ($7 students & seniors)

Ursa Ensemble—Quartet for the End of Time
A story old as time: prolific visionary French composer is captured during WWII and sent to a German POW camp, where he spends his days scribbling away on a transcendental masterpiece which he then premieres in the camp with other musician inmates for a small audience comprised of prisoners and guards.

Though I’ve never heard it performed as it’s meant to be heard—on makeshift instruments in a jail watched over by stone-faced Nazis—it’s still an incredible experience when played by professionals on modern instruments in a pristine concert hall. Any chance to see it performed live should not be missed!
May 11 at 7:30pm, Narloch Piano Studio, 4636 North Francisco; $10 suggested donation

The Chicago Composers Orchestra—Hymn to Humanity
Begun by composers Brian Baxter and Randall West and now in its sixth year, the Chicago Composers Orchestra is a kind of miraculous happening akin to, well, watching a winning Cubs team. A full orchestra interested in programming new works, often by unknown composers, most of whom are local? It’s proof positive that anything can happen.

Led by its new music director Allen Tinkham, the CCO takes on works by Bang on a Can stalwarts Julia Wolfe and David Lang and premieres an ambitious new work for orchestra and chorus by Eric Malmquist for which they’ll be joined by the Wicker Park Choral Singers.
May 13 at 8pm, St. James Cathedral, 65 East Huron; $15-$20

High Concept Labs—Open House 2016
The artist residency program at High Concept Labs has consistently produced imaginative collaborations and wide-ranging cross-disciplinary works of great quality. Their annual Open House is a chance to experience a kind of speed date version of their current visual art, performance art and musical projects.
May 14 at 7:30pm, 2233 South Throop; $15-$30

What do you suppose is the approximate age where we tip over into nostalgia, where we can’t go anywhere without thinking obsessively about the last time we were there?  I’m thinking about this because I’m in Boston today for a speaking gig at the New England Conservatory of Music but everywhere I go the ghosts of the last time I was here crowd my mind.

At the time I had only been in Chicago for a couple of years and my mom was living in Augusta, Maine.  During the summer she suggested that my sister, who still lived in Missouri, and I come to Maine and we would spend a week at the Old Orchard beach which turned out to be one of the happiest times I ever spent with my family.

At the time I was working as a “job recruiter” at a place called Adlab. Our job was to pre-screen applicants for major companies and weed out the crazies. The phone would ring and I would answer, “thank you for calling Target” or perhaps Fidelity Investments or whatever the company was. Then I would lead the applicant through a series of brain dead questions that a surprisingly high number of people would get wrong. If they missed too many we would “flush” them by hitting F7.

The great thing about Adlab, aside from the stimulating conversations, was the flexible hours so I decided to stay another couple of days after my sister left and my mom and I drove to Boston for two nights.  The first night we had dinner at the Fairmont Hotel on Copley Square and it’s one of the happiest memories I have of my mother.

For once our conversation seemed natural, not strained or full of real or imagined recriminations. The restaurant was elegant and there was a wonderful pianist and I felt like such a grownup sitting there casually drinking wine with my mother.

So of course I made a beeline to the hotel to drink a toast to that night but, unsurprisingly after so many years, they’ve completely remodeled it.  The beautiful ceiling is still there but they’ve installed a ton of TVs and the piano has been replaced by piped-in dance music and they don’t even serve dinner anymore, just upscale bar food.

It was very crowded though and I doubt that anyone noticed the guy standing by himself in the corner silently drinking a glass of wine in homage to a long-ago night.

Originally ran in NewCity Magazine April 11, 2016

For nearly twenty years I made my living as a piano teacher and had as many as sixty students at one time. Over the last few years though, as my kale farming business has taken off, I’ve been cutting down on the number of students and these days I’m down to just one.

She’s close to ninety years old and, when she’s not in Paris or Mexico or some other far-flung locale, she drives herself to her lessons and she’s a better driver than you or me or most anyone I know.

In this and many other ways she’s my model for how to get old. Not only can she drive a car better than the average texting millennial but she’s also grown very wise with age. We usually shoot the shit for the first couple of minutes, talk about politics, climate change, open-carry gun laws, depressing shit like that. Then after a few minutes of this she always says, “oh well, at least we have music.”

Damn right. Here’s some upcoming live music events to help you forget everything else.

Peter Ferry Presents Marc Mellits’ Fiftieth Birthday Portrait
Chicago percussionist Peter Ferry has a knack for planning concerts that are adventurous, musically compelling and just plain fun. The first time I saw him perform he played Steve Reich’s iconic duet “Clapping Music” but opted out of a performance partner in favor of a video of himself clapping in front of “The Bean.” They both tore it up. Now he’s presenting a birthday extravaganza, multimedia performance of the music of Marc Mellits, a post-minimalist Chicago composer with a serious melodic gift.
April 17, 8:30pm at Constellation, 3111 North Western, $10-$15.

Record: A Radio Opera
Although this “opera” won’t have much singing, sex, violence or viking horns, it has something far better: Brechtian modernist street cred. Radio opera, or Funkoper, features live performers interacting simultaneously with a radio broadcast and was used to stunning effect by the likes of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill back in the day. Now Chicago’s art-classical-punk ensemble Mocrep teams up with German composer Ludwig Abraham to revive this fascinating and somewhat neglected art form.
April 23, 8pm at Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 South Morgan.

Fulcrum Point—Proclamation!
Symphonic jazz composer, conductor, scholar, educator, writer and winner of more prizes than you could shake a stick at in a comfortable stretch of time, David Baker, who passed away last month, was the very soul of a musical icon. Fulcrum Point New Music Project celebrates his legacy and that of three generations of great black composers traced in Baker’s seminal book “The Black Composer Speaks.”
April 29, 7:30pm at The Promontory, 5311 South Lake Park, $25, $35 table seats, $15 standing room.

The Party
Chicago’s only classical cassette-tape label Parlour Tapes+ teams up with local new music powerhouse Dal Niente to celebrate the latter’s ten-year anniversary and the release of a new album with a five-hour party featuring booze, conversation and that staple of any party, live performances of American and European modernist musical works. With new pieces by indie-noise band Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier, Dal Niente founder Kirsten Broberg and Ensemble Pamplemousse stalwart Natacha Diels among many others, this party might just go all night.
April 30, 5pm-10pm at Dal Niente Studio, 4045 North Rockwell, third floor.

I go all over the place speaking about contemporary music several times each month and my talking points are generally optimistic.  I would even say that they’re overwhelmingly optimistic, Pollyanna-ish even.

But I’ve been a composer and contemporary music advocate now for many many years and I do have to ask, are we getting anywhere?  There’s no doubt that there are more groups than ever before performing contemporary music and I do feel personally that getting Relevant Tones on largely conservative classical music radio stations around the country was no small feat.

But, in spite of this, I would say that we still have a long ways to go. Of course if you’re going to ask if you’re getting anywhere you should really know what the goal is.  For me at least the goal is that everyone in the country has a sense that classical music is an ongoing art form, that you could tell folks you’re a composer and they’d have some sense of what you do.

There’s so much creativity happening in contemporary music around the world, it’s really astounding and I feel very fortunate to have a front row seat for much of it.  But I feel strongly that it’s not enough for us to make great art, we also have to advocate for our art.  The vast majority of contemporary music concerts that I go to are attended almost solely by other composers and new music performers and this is something that I would dearly like to change.

Everyone understands that there are people still writing novels, still painting, creating dance works, etc.  But I think that it’s different when it comes to contemporary music. Composers, like visual artists, mostly want to  be recognized by their peers and succeed within the parameters of their world but for them if their work is accepted into a major museum, well, major museums are attended by the general public and we just don’t have an equivalent.

There are some exceptions of course.  The BBC Proms is attended by the general public and they program contemporary music, there are outdoor festivals like the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago and many others across the country that frequently program contemporary music and are attended by non-cognoscenti but by and large contemporary music has not done as good a job as the other arts of presenting itself as relevant to the general public.

It’s a major achievement for a composer to start getting important commissions and to get performances of her music around the world.  I would just argue that it’s an even bigger achievement to get major commissions and performances that are attended by a wider cross section of the public.  So, we’re making progress in terms of more and more ensembles interested in playing contemporary music and that’s wonderful.  Now we just have to take the next step and educate the general public.

Although my life is hardly a prison, lately I have escape on the brain. It all started two days ago when Maria and I went on an organized bike ride and this woman named Cassandra casually told us that she had just bought a one-way ticket to Mexico and so this was the last ride she would be leading for a while, maybe forever.

All through the ride I couldn’t stop thinking about it. A one-way ticket? Maybe forever? How is she doing it? What about her stuff?  What about family obligations? What about the need to make money and contribute to the commonwealth through the rendering of taxes upon your income and purchases?

I was also jealous because, although I didn’t go this year, I would normally be in Mexico myself right about now.   For the last several years I have escaped the weather every February and decamped to Mexico City for two weeks of sunshine, Spanish lessons, amazing food, trips to the pyramids and salty, lime-encrusted beers.

And then, thinking of escaping to Mexico City made me think of my first Spanish teacher there, Berenice.  She taught us swear words in Mexican slang and said that her favorite verb was huir, which can mean to flee like from the scene of a crime like OJ Simpson but which also means to escape, to chuck it all and hit the road like Dean Moriarty. When I returned the following year she didn’t work there anymore and I haven’t seen her on any of my subsequent trips.

As far as I can tell Berenice made good on her escape. I do wonder from time to time though what happened to her and what her life is like now and if huir is still her favorite verb.  I wonder if she and Casandra will meet up on an organized bike ride somewhere. And I wonder which definition of huir she was really talking about.

It’s nearly spring and for me that always means it’s Sound of Silent Film time.  This year I’m producing the event in New York and Chicago within a month of each other so it’s an extra busy time.

A huge part of my promotion strategy is postering and after all of these years I still mostly do this myself,  partly because I’m a control freak who doesn’t believe others will center the poster properly, but also because I enjoy biking around the city slapping posters on every bulletin board I happen across.

Once inside a building I think of myself as a ninja.   I get in and out lightning fast, leaving a trail of posters in my wake. No one sees me come or go, they just see an awesome event that they should probably try to get out to.

Last year things didn’t go quite as planned however.  I was heading into Columbia College which is a goldmine of bulletin boards but which also, as I now know, has notoriously strict parking rules.  I had chosen not to bike this time and to drive instead and left my car outside with flashers on and in the time it took me to artfully place posters and postcards on ten floors of one building, my car was towed.

I came out flushed with my victory only to find that I now had to take a humiliating walk of shame to the underground city facility where literally hundreds of similarly dispirited people wait to be gouged for the privilege of getting their car back, which also now has nifty numbers painted on the window so everyone knows what an idiot you are.

That set the publicity ninja back a bit I can tell you but I’m hoping to get the mojo back this year.