Sorry I haven’t written for a while, things have been busy. I’d like to give a big high-five to Ryan for keeping the dream alive while I am hunkered down.

But this is exciting: Thomas Adès‘s new opera is going to be premiered in Salzburg sometime between 2013 and 2016! It is based on the film The Exterminating Angel which is totally awesome and continues his trend of far-out themes for his operas. For all of the times that Adès has been compared to Britten, if that is going to hold up I think it will depend on how Adès ‘s career as an opera composer takes shape. But for now I hope everyone is as excited as I am.

I’m writing to disseminate my thoughts on being a first-time AMS conference attendee in the age of Twitter and academic hipsterism.

The San Francisco AMS meeting was indeed my first national conference. I’m incredibly grateful to my institution’s music department for awarding me a decent amount of funding to help offset the cost of flying across the country and staying in a swanky hotel. I more-or-less attended the conference alone; I didn’t know anyone who had less than ten years and 3 degrees on me. I had also never been to San Francisco. Going to AMS meant a lot of “firsts.”

(Here’s the part where I talk about the things I’m supposed to pretend didn’t happen:)

I was incredibly nervous leading up to the conference. In preparation, I packed my suitcase a full week early, wrote several versions of an “elevator pitch” describing my thesis, and frequented department websites in order to match faculty names, faces, and research projects. I even wrote out the entire BART schedule for Thursday afternoon, and made sure to have exactly $8.10 to make the trip to the Hyatt. I convinced myself that everything had to be perfect to survive the conference.

I quickly learned that papers are the glue that holds the meeting together, but more celebrated conference traditions include meeting new people, catching up with old friends, and drinking lots of coffee. Since I have no musicological “old friends,” I relied on a few individuals to help me meet new ones. The conference Buddy Program is an excellent resource; I was lucky to be matched with Amusicology’s own Ryan Raul Bañagale, who served as living proof that musicologists at my school aren’t the only human musicologists out there. (By the end of the conference, I realized that pretty much everyone is a real person, but more on that later.) If I can impart any wisdom upon future first-time conference attendees, I’d strongly encourage participation in the Buddy Program. I’m also going to name names and thank my advisor/mentor/professor/more-than-occasional therapist Phil Gentry and my former professor Charles Carson for always being around when I wanted an introduction and for making sure I was surviving the conference. I could go on with more thanks to more people, but that’s not the point…

It turns out that AMS is exactly my scene. Pardon my gushing, but I found it incredibly refreshing to spend a weekend being around brilliant, kind people who share my otherwise fringe-interests. This may be old news to most of the community, but I found myself amazed by the scope of thought represented at the conference. I find it hard to believe Michael Jackson and C.P.E. Bach can be examined at the same conference, within a single discipline. Isn’t the diversity wonderful? I certainly think so.

I’ll admit that I was afraid of meeting all sorts of people who I had been hearing and reading about from the safety of my own anonymity. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the people I met were as interested in talking to me as I was in talking to them. It also shouldn’t have surprised me that I could actively participate in the conference through Twitter, which served as an equalizer. I’m only a “little undergrad,” but I comfortably held my own on Twitter. I tweeted, I replied, I re-tweeted, I got re-tweeted. Twitter made the conference feel cozy, and it was just another way I felt welcomed into the musicological community. It also made the hour-and-a-half business meeting Saturday night far more entertaining than it should have been for a somewhat clueless newbie like myself. The best part is that it didn’t feel rude; it actually enhanced the scholarly content of the conference. Go figure. In general, the musicology Tweeting/blogging world has really helped humanize a discipline that could otherwise seem incredibly daunting.

In his recent post in Amusicology, Ralph Locke mentions the “many, many papers by grad students.” I get the sense that this is something of a criticism, implying he would like to see more papers from more senior scholars. I also noticed the abundance of papers given by graduate students, but I saw it as an inspiration. If they can do it and do it well, I’ll be able to do it, too! Seeing so many student papers at the national conference makes the field seem welcoming to the scholastically green, and therefore open to new ideas. I’ll also say that there was no shortage of papers by senior scholars; I applaud the program committee for achieving what I see as a healthy balance. I’m admittedly clueless to the programming politics, but I’m impressed by the end result.

I’d like to wrap up by thanking musicologists across the country, in varied stages of their careers, for fostering a welcoming environment. I had a fabulous time at the San Francisco conference, and I’m looking forward to a lifetime of future conferences.

I wonder if his concerns are still the same now that he has attended this conference. What I saw/experienced was lots of papers–official ones during the daytime, and unofficial ones at night, organized by Study Groups and such. Many, many papers by grad students, I thought. But this is from the perspective of a senior scholar. (I’m 62 years old, so probably now qualify for that seemingly distinguished title by simple matter of chronological age….)

The question of how to run the Annual Meeting is always being debated. If anybody reading this blog (or writing for it) has concrete proposals, by all means make them to the Board or the Council (through your Council Representative).

The Board itself ponders these matters anew almost every year. There is a questionnaire (online) that all attendees of last week’s meeting received, asking us some questions in this regard, e.g., whether papers should be shortened to 20 minutes, thereby creating 2-hour sessions and hence more sessions.

I hate this. I find that a 20-minute time frame–which I’ve had to abide by at some conferences–does not allow us to let enough music–or basic contextual info–be heard, and so our findings just don’t make much impact on a listening audience that isn’t already closely attuned to the repertoire and “where it’s coming from.” I say this also as an audience member listening, not just as a presenter speaking. I need to be eased into a topic, and have some concrete music to react to. I didn’t know the particular Telemann overtures-suites that Stephen Zohn spoke on last week. I needed to hear enough to give me a sense, or else I would have had to take almost everything he said on faith.

But that’s just me. You may feel differently, in which case I hope you’ll continue to speak up!

As for anonymity, I thought that the Board made a very wise decision a few years ago in keeping the original 120 “blind” papers and then allowing the Program Committee to add another 24 once the names of the abstract-writers have been revealed. This allows for the possibility that one or another abstract may sound much more interesting and substantive once one knows that the person who wrote the abstract is the world-renowned author of book X on the subject (a basic fact that s/he is not permitted to make clear in the abstract itself).

Speaking of which, what does an abstract writer do in order to indicate that s/he is taking his/her own work further? Some of the abstracts published in the conference program refer to “my previous article in journal X”—but clearly this wording was not in the original submitted abstract. Some of us have taken to referring to ourselves in the third person. But this can create an unintentionally misleading effect, if musicologist Y creates an abstract lamenting the weaknesses in the 2008 article by Y, in order to establish the crucial importance of getting his or her paper on next year’s AMS meeting (in New Orleans).

I (Ryan) will be tweeting @amusicology with the #AMSSanFran hashtag.

There is no official Amusicology gathering this year–we just didn’t get ourselves organized in time.  However, keep your ears open/watch the twitter feed for a possible impromptu gathering inspired by this year’s Amusicology buttons.

Yes: We have buttons!  Find Drew or I for your own piece of the amusicological blogosphere.

Speaking of the blogosphere, I would like to call attention to a few AMS presentations by our fellow travelers:

• Amusicology contributor Lincoln Ballard will present a San Francisco-related paper on The Fillmore on Thursday evening at 8:45 pm.
• Fellow blogger Phil Gentry will present a paper on the “Cage and Friends” panel Friday at 11:15 am.
• Fellow blogger Matthew Mugmon will present a paper on Mahler and Boulanger on Friday afternoon at 2:45 pm.
• Amusicology contributor Sarah Gerk will present a paper on Amy Beach’s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday morning at 9:00 am.
• I am a panel member for a Saturday lunch-time panel called “How to Secure a Tenure Track Position” presented by the Committee on Career-Related Issues, the Committee on Cultural Diversity, and the Committee on Women and Gender.
• Amusicology contributor Ralph Locke will present a paper on Exoticism in the 16th and 17th centuries on Saturday afternoon at 2:00 pm.

I hope I haven’t left any of our blogging friends off the list.  If so, please comment and I’ll update accordingly.

I really look forward to the AMS meeting each year.  First and foremost it is a chance to reconnect with my ever-growing network of musicological friends and colleagues.  I appreciate this more than ever since completing graduate school and moving to the other side of the country.  Not only does AMS offer a chance to catch up socially, it also allows me to stay up-to-date with what my friends and colleagues’ own research.  Though time constraints have made paper attendance increasingly difficult in recent years.

One reason I may have inadvertently missed someone in my rundown of blogger-presenters is that there are almost too many papers to keep track of.  Last year the AMS program committee  made the switch to nine [NINE!] simultaneous paper sessions.  Although this allows for a wider range of coverage and greater number of speakers each year, I find it frustrating that many of the papers I wish to attend occur simultaneously.  I know that conflicts always emerge, but going through the program this year I find even more than last year.  I appreciate the efforts of the program committee–to review 700+ abstracts (a 13% increase on last year) and assemble the finalists into individual sessions is a remarkable task.  Furthermore, I appreciate the marked change in coverage that has resulted from the additional sessions.  However, I wonder if there is a way to pair it back to less simultaneous sessions while maintaining the breadth of coverage.  Here are three  potentially unpopular suggestions that might help to get us there:

1) Make all selections anonymous–no more reserving spots for well-known scholars with bad abstracts.

2) You can only present every three years instead of every other year.

3) Put graduate students on the program committee.  OK, too far?  Put junior faculty on the program committee.

This meeting marks the 10th anniversary of my first AMS meeting (Atlanta, 2001).  Although I haven’t been to every meeting since then, I have enjoyed seeing the changes that have taken place over the course of a decade and participating in that process.  I wonder if others have thoughts about the meeting–either now or over time.  Perhaps a series of brief blog posts here and on other blogs about the AMS meeting is in order.  Any takers?

Safe travels to all those going San Francisco.  Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

Although the 2011-12 job wiki (located on a different site this year) is in full swing, I wanted to take a moment to pull together some data from the results of the 2010-11 season.  Before I break it down, let me offer a few caveats:

• As, always: What you see is what you get.  (See last year’s post for more on that)
• All the following figures come from the wiki as it stood mid-September 2011, which is when it became more-or-less dormant.
• I included neither the theory/dean/chair searches nor the “unknown acceptances” listed on the wiki.
• For a fuller picture, please see our posts from 2010, 2009, and 2008.

On last year’s wiki, someone noted that there were about 75 listed jobs with known acceptances.  That same person asked: “Does that make 2010-11 a good year, a bad year, an average year, a less than average year, a more than average year?”  Let’s see…

There were a total of 77 listed hires:

Assistant Professor (tenure-track), Ethnomusicology: 12

Assistant Professor (tenure-track), Historical Musicology:  36

Postdoctoral Fellow, Ethnomusicology: 4

Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical Musicology: 11

Visiting Assistant Professor, Ethnomusicology: 5

Visiting Assistant Professor, Historical Musicology: 9

For comparison (total number of hires/positions posted):

Placements were made from 37 schools:

In the listings that follow, an exclamation point (!) indicates the placement of an ABD or 2011 PhD in a tenure-track position.  Unless otherwise indicated, all other placements are tenure-track assistant professor position.

I use the following symbols accordingly: + means one placement was a post-doc; * means one placement was a Visiting Assistant Professor

One hire (18): Boulder (*); Cambridge (!); Cornell (+); Eastman; Indiana; Kansas; London; Memphis; Macquarie; Minnesota (*); Northwestern; Oregon (*); Salzburg (*); Stanford; UC-San Diego (*); UC-Santa Cruz; U North Texas; UT-Austin (+)

Two hires (8): Chicago (+); Georgia (!); Illinois (!); Kings College; McGill (!); Princeton (!); UC Berkeley; UW Madison (+)

Three hires (4): Florida State (**); NYU (++); UC-Santa Barbara (+*); Yale (!!*)

Four hires (2): UCLA (+**); UNC-Chapel Hill (!);

Five hires (1): Michigan (++)

Six hires (3): Columbia; Harvard (++*); Pennsylvania (!++**)

For comparison: Year on Year High Placements:

Number of hires (TT, Postdoc, and VAP) based on year of PhD receipt:

ABD/2011  (23); 2010 (18); 2009 (18); 2008 (2); 2007 (3); 2006 (2); 2005 (4); 2004 (2); 2002 (1); 2001 (1); 1997 (1)

Tenure Track (TT) Hires based on year of PhD receipt:

ABD/2011 (8); 2010 (12); 2009 (11); 2008 (1); 2007 (3); 2006 (2); 2005 (3); 2004 (2); 2002 (1); 2001 (1)

Postdoctoral (PD) Hires based on year of PhD receipt:

ABD/2011 (8); 2010 (3); 2009 (3); 2008 (1)

Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) Hires based on year of PhD receipt:

ABD/2011 (6); 2010 (2); 2009 (4); 2005 (1)

Here is a pretty graph that puts these hiring figures in perspective:

[Red = Postdoc, Green = VAP, Blue = Tenture-Track]

A few thoughts:

To answer the question posed at the outset of this post: Was 2011 a good year?  Yes, it was a good year.  A greater number of placements were made than at any point since 2008.  More importantly, the range of PhD programs making placements was higher than in years past–at least ten more than last year alone.

The majority of tenure-track jobs went to people who earned their degree in the past three years, with those who finished in 2009 and 2010 pulling in the highest numbers.  The drop-off at 2008 is dramatic, however this might be attributed to the fact that more than 100 hires were made that year.

Not all listed hires were the result of a search tracked by the wiki. I noticed this year that several folks added their hiring info (generally in a VAP position) to the “known acceptances” list.  Having one’s name on the wiki is a point of pride for many, so I it makes some degree of sense that these are included in my data set.  It also highlights the fact that there are numerous jobs out there that emerge beyond the traditional hiring methods that the wiki tracks.

Ergo: Not all hires were ultimately listed on the wiki.  As I mentioned in my caveats, I did not include “unknown acceptances” here.  Furthermore, some positions, such as my current postdoc at Colorado College (through the fantastic Consortium for Faculty Diversity) did not appear on the wiki.  To give you a sense of how this sort of purposeful omission might skew the data, had my placement appeared on the wiki Harvard’s total placements for this year would have totaled 7.  This would have moved that institution back into the top position (based on placements) for the first time in five years.  Whoops.  Sorry Harvard.

Will 2012 be a good year?  At present there are more than 50 jobs searches active on the wiki.  Based on this alone,  we already have a lot of potential.  The VAP listings generally appear in early spring, so we might again hit more than 75 hires.  We’ll just have to wait and see..

It is an amazing resource for research: the perusal of on-line indexes and archives, locating out-of-press recordings and movies on YouTube, discovering random memorabilia on eBay.   Nearly the entire run of the Boston Globe just became available via ProQuest.  It allowed me to find a photograph of Isaac Goldberg (George Gershwin’s first biographer) at his 1905 high school commencement.* Amazing.

But, as we know, instant access leads to misinformation.  Google in particular easily leads people astray.  See the results of Ann Curry’s commencement speech or the flub made by a Fox News by using an image of Tina Fey for a story about Sarah Palin.  See also, countless student papers and test answers that embrace a similar cut-and-paste approach to research.

The results are frustrating and increasingly difficult to combat, especially given the nature of information exchange in the twenty-first century.  Today’s rapid-fire on-line interactions provide ample opportunity for misinformation to go “viral.”  Take, for example, the pacifistic quotation attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the days following the death of Osama Bin Laden.  It turned out to be a fake, though not identified as such before ubiquitous postings to Facebook–at least among my group of friends–made it appear as “fact.”

I recently received an email along similar lines that piqued my musicological interest.  It was an email forward containing a link to a video claiming to feature a rare film appearance by Little Richard as a child.

Click through and take a look:  http://www.wimp.com/oldschool/

Talented kid, no doubt.  But Little Richard it ain’t.   As indicated by the link at the bottom of the page on which this video appears, the clip is from a 1946 film titled No Leave, No Love staring Van Johnson.  Little Richard (aka Richard Wayne Penniman) was born in 1932, which would have made him about 12 at the time.  The pianist in this clip looks a bit younger.  Some Googling reveals that I haven’t been the only one to question the identity of this performer.

Image from varietyinblack.tumblr.com

It turns out that this is Frank “Sugar Chile” Robinson (b. 1938) a little-known boogie-woogie pianist who was only 8 when he appeared in No Leave, No Love. He was dubbed a prodigy at an early age, which earned him the opportunity to perform with legends such as Lionel Hampton and Count Basie.  He left show business at the age of 14 to pursue his education, an intriguing choice given his talent and popularity. He went on to earn a PhD in psychology.  He is still alive, resides in Detroit, and plays the piano publicly from time to time.

The song featured in this supposed Little Richard video–“Caldonia”–was first recorded by the esteemed Louis Jordan in 1945.  It is about a girl with “big feet” who is “long, lean, and lanky,” thereby not conforming to expected standards of beauty.  Nonetheless, we are informed: “She’s my baby and I love her just the same.”  “Suger Chile” Robinson’s filmic performance closely replicates Jordan’s recording, right down to a spoken dialogue interlude.  In both we learn that Caldonia doesn’t meet his mother’s approval to which he not-so-subtly retorts: “But momma didn’t know what Caldonia was puttin’ down.” Although it isn’t Little Richard, it is easy to imagine him offering a similar performance.

And that is the allure of this video.  Little Richard remains a well-known figure, a household name, whose fame derives from his on-stage persona, frenetic piano playing, and high-energy vocal performances of draws.  This video reveals such qualities in their supposed infancy: banging out boogie-woogie figures with fingers, fists, and elbows; delivering dialogue direct to the (white) audience while riffing through a chorus; there is even a punctuated, high-pitched “woo!”

Because of the star power of Little Richard’s name and public expectations of what he sounded like in his youth, this video has gone viral.   From what I can surmise, Richard’s name was attached to this video in late May (though it has been online for several years).  Doubtless, the clip would not have circulated as widely recently without such association.  I don’t know how many times the video has been accessed via the email circulating whimp.com link.  But it has nearly 800,000 facebook “likes,” suggesting the likelihood of several million views.

Academics constantly lament misinformation.  As we (and our students) become ever more tethered to the internet, we must find ways to deal with misinformation beyond just pointing it out or complaining.  I think it is interesting to consider why such misinformation is so appealing, why it persists.  Furthermore, in a world where a new multimillion-hit recording “artist” emerges every “Friday” it seems more urgent than ever to think about how the history of music is being represented and written online.

Though I’m a bit tired of the term, this “Sugar Chile” Robinson video provides a “teachable moment.”  Here we have a document that brings an obscure figure to light, even if under false pretenses.  We have the opportunity to correct the record and bring forward more information about Robinson.  As I mentioned, he is still alive.  As a result of this new-found publicity, it would be nice if someone would the time to do a formal interview with him.  I’m looking to you, musicological friends at the University of Michigan.

A final thought:  There has been a lot of talk on the American Musicological Society’s email list-serve about the “failure of musicology on a national level” and what can be done to correct this.  Bloggers are already on the case.  They write on events and scholarship daily–not everyone at once, but that’s what keeps it interesting.  It may not be as glitzy as the Sunday  “New York Times” but it has the potential to reach even greater portions of the population.

Amusicology is always accepting guest posts.  Our motto is “Musicology in 1,000 Words or Less.”  Please be in touch!

-Ryan Raul Bañagale-

——

* If you have access to ProQuest, here is a link to that document.

I don’t know about you, but I find acknowledgments a tricky business.  Most attempt to strike a balance between professional shout-out, personal gratitude, and family recognition.  Some maintain the scholarly voice used for the body of the text, while others take the opportunity to interject a bit more personality.  Whatever the approach taken, I think most would agree that there is never enough space to acknowledge all that contributed in some way to the project.

Although I am quite happy with the acknowledgments section of my dissertation, there are several people/places/things that for one reason or another didn’t make the final cut.  Here they are–a combination of facetious and sincere–in no particular order.

Thank you to:

• Cosima Wagner: For keeping a diary from 1869-1877 that, when translated into English by Geoffrey Skelton, became the perfect two-volume set upon which to ergonomically perch my laptop when working in the library.

• The Red House: For making the best martinis in Cambridge.

• Drew Massey (acknowledged, but not fully enough): For writing a dissertation that highlights the agency of the music editor, thereby demonstrating one of the many ways in which  historical narratives are been shaped by oft-ignored contributors; for his input on the project from start to finish; for helping me keep The Red House in business.

• KEXP (especially morning host John Richards): For spinning the best writing music a guy could hope for.

• The Pusey 3 Stacks: For being the furthest corner in the bottom-most level of Widener Library and holding seemingly every book I needed to checkout and for having fun automated bookshelves that almost always made the journey worth it.

• The Custodial Staff of the Music Building: For the friendly smiles and pleasantries that helped to break-up the monotony of the writing days.

• Dropbox: For automatically backing-up my dissertation files online and for allowing me to work on those files from anywhere, while updating any changes to the file on my home computer.

• Richard Agee: For introducing me to musicology and getting me to (and through) my first AMS national meeting (Atlanta).

• Fresh Pond: For providing me with a place to walk/run/think 365 days a year.

• Harvard Square Coffee Houses: For not providing ample space to sit and work, thus relegating me to the quiet confines of the music library.

• Beer Hour (formerly Sherry Hour): For providing a reason for Harvard music graduate students to gather in the lounge at 5 pm each Friday after the library closed.

• The Society for American Music: For giving me the opportunity to share my work-in-progress over the course of many years.

• The Charles River: See “Fresh Pond” (above).

• The Job Search: For forcing me to focus my dissertation into fifteen-second, thirty-second, one-minute, five-minute, thirty-minute, and forty-five-minute explanations.

• The Woman at the Registrar’s Office: For carefully examining and accepting the final, bound version of my dissertation even though one of my horizontally-oriented figures had a vertically-oriented caption, thereby saving me $250.

I’m sure there are more thank-yous that have inadvertently been omitted here.  Those will just have to be saved for the eventual blog post about acknowledgments that had to be left out of the book…

I’d love to hear some of the unacknowledged thank yous stemming from the academic work of our readers.  Anything in particular kept you going on your last major project?

Ryan’s dissertation is awesome. I can say that because I have actually read the whole thing! It raises issues of highbrow-vs-lowbrow, anxieties of influence, and canon formation in the larger orbit of Rhapsody in Blue. Also, it has some dazzlingly multicolored charts, so you shouldn’t settle for the monochromatic version you can download from UMI.

Ryan’s graduation also marks the beginning of national hegemony for Amusicology, as he prepares to move out to Colorado in the fall. This makes me sad, since amusicology planning meetings will now have to take place over skype, but happy to have offices in multiple time zones.

Hats Off!

Until last month, no one had heard a large-ensemble concert performance of Mary Lou Williams’ Zodiac Suite in nearly sixty-five years.  This twelve-movement composition–one for each sign of the astrological calendar–originally premiered at New York’s Town Hall on December 30, 1945.  It featured Williams and her combo, accompanied by a small orchestral ensemble.

Here is a recording of “Cancer” from a live recording of the of the concert.  The movement features the inimitable Ben Webster on tenor saxophone:

Like most jazz-classical experiments, critics didn’t quite know how to deal with the Williams suite.  Was it jazz? Was it Classical?  One review in the New York Times stated: “The piano’s part was largely that of the old ‘continuo’ in the early music… The composition was scarcely a jazz piece at all, making its appeal as more serious work—how successfully time will tell.”*

Time has told. “The number of performances of the suite can be counted on two hands,” says Michael Heller, PhD candidate in music at Harvard University, “and only Geri Allen has performed it in its entirety.”  All subsequent performances, including those of Geri Allen, have been in trio or small-combo format.  That is, they represent a significant reduction of the version heard at the 1945 premiere

Heller recently took over as director of Harvard’s Dudley House Jazz Band.** To mark the 2010 centenary of Mary Lou Williams’ birth, he decided to undertake a full-ensemble revival of the Zodiac Suite. Heller first encountered Zodiac while working as a DJ during his undergraduate days and became familiar with the Mary Lou Williams archive while working on his masters degree at Rutgers.  This past summer he contacted the Williams archive and discovered that they had the original parts from the 1945 premiere–parts that had not seen the light of day in a long, long time.

After receiving permission from Father Peter O’Brian, keeper of the Williams estate, Heller began the long process of arranging the suite for the Harvard ensemble.  The original orchestrations include parts for strings, bassoon, tuba, bass clarinet, and oboe–none of which are a part of the traditional jazz-band make up of the Dudley House ensemble.  Over the course of several weeks, Heller prepared the suite to fit the needs of the ensemble.  This process was not as simple as re-assigning the bassoon parts to the baritone saxophone, for example.  The textures and timbres of the original arrangements–which have yet to receive significant musicological consideration–were carefully selected by Williams and her collaborator, Milton Orent (who also conducted the premiere).***  Heller had to maintain the artistry of the original, while infusing the work with an extra level of musical interest (and challenges) for both his performers and eventual audience.

I had the honor playing the piano with the Dudley House Jazz Band at the December 19, 2010 concert.  One of my favorite sections of the suite is the opening buildup of “Gemini.”  In this movement, Williams establishes a foundation that sets an ascending C-major triad against a descending d-minor triad.  The melody, scalar in its design, is constructed through the piecemeal addition of individual instruments.  It is an exciting crescendo.  Listen to the following clips, the first from the 1945 premiere and the second from our concert.

It is also a moment that nicely highlights Heller’s creative recasting of original parts amongst his ensemble.  I’ll highlight one particularly creative aspect:  After the piano, bass, and guitar establish the C-major against D-major pattern, the trombones join.  Rather than simply play straight arpeggios, however, Heller divided the two chords across the four trombone players.  Stands 1 and 2 play the ascending C-major chord and stands 3 and 4 play the descending d-minor chord.  In both cases, they alternate notes over the course of the measure.  Trombone 1 plays “C” on beat 1 and “G” on beat 3; Trombone 2 plays “E” on beat two and “C” on beat 4.  Likewise, Trombone 3 plays “D” on beat 1 and “F” on beat 3; Trombone 4 plays “A” on beat 2 and “D” on beat 4.  The result is a sonic and visual kaleidoscope.

The task of re-orchestrating and and re-arranging took Heller an average of eight hours per movement.  However, movements such as “Aquarius” took significantly longer.  According to Heller, there were many errors and discrepancies in the original parts.  Perhaps this accounts for the particularly shaky rendition of this movement at the 1945 premiere performance.  Listen to the following clips.

The movement calls for instrumental accompaniment from the start.  However, either due to the previously mentioned errors in the parts or inadequate rehearsal time, Williams had to play much of this movement on her own.  When the ensemble does play on the 1945 recording, as you can hear, they struggle.  For example, the musicians miss their entrance at :47, forcing Williams to comp until they catch up.  The correct entrance as intended by the original arrangements is heard at 1:17 of the 2010 recording.

The Zodiac Suite remains appealing to me both as a pianist and as a musicologist.  I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Mary Lou Williams’ pianistic and compositional style over the course of the past semester and plan further investigations into her work.  Thank you to Mike Heller and Father Peter O’Brian for making this enjoyable experience possible.

—————

* C.L., “Mary Lou Williams Plays ‘Zodiac Suite’,” New York Times, 31 December 1945, p. 12

** This is the same ensemble that premiered Duke Ellington’s 1932 arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in 2009.

*** Chapters in two recent biographies of Williams discuss the preparation and reception of the Zodiac Suite: Tammy Lynn Kernodle’s Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams and Linda Dahl’s Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams. Both provide a brief analysis of each movement, but do not discuss the arrangements themselves.  There remains a great deal of uncertainty about how much of the arrangements were prepared by Williams versus Orent.