The Maestro's Cello

Talk about a blast from the past ...

We had a rare privilege last week at the summer community arts program of the Coral Gables Congregational Church. Amit Peled was in town with Pablo Casals' very own cello, a 1733 Goffriler that sounds wonderful despite pushing 300 years of age.

I'll get to the music later, but at the end of the evening Peled took questions from the audience in lieu of an encore. We learned that after he came to America from Israel to study, his teacher came to the conclusion that he needed a better instrument. He offered an introduction to Mrs. Casals, Pablo's wife, who he thought might be able to put him in touch with someone. Marta Casals Istomin is still with us thanks to her youthful alliance with the aging musician who passed away in 1973 when she was 36.

Peled auditioned for her, and received a rather thorough critique which "took him to pieces." However, she went on to inquire if he would be able to come to New York and try out the maestro's own instrument. The only answer to such an invitation is yes please, so it came to pass. The cello had been lying dormant in its case for decades. Peled described it as a sleeping old man who did not want to be disturbed. It had actually suffered seriously from neglect, but he was able to coax some sound out of it.

A short time later he was contacted by her again. Would he like to have the maestro's instrument on extended loan? Again, the only answer was yes please! He pointed out, however, that it needed major restoration before it would be up for any concert performances. So this too was arranged. A restorer ended up spending a year and a half, eight hours a day, to bring it back into condition.

Evidently he did a superb job. The cello has a rich and warm finish that glows as if from within, and a tone that sounds exactly the same. Combined with a modern bow, which Peled prefers to use, it proves itself capable of clear and incisive attacks as well as smooth and heart rending low tones. The instrument shone as a strong co-star in what amounts to a comeback tour.

To commemorate the occasion, Peled is performing a program of the same pieces played by Casals on his first American tour back in 1915, one hundred years ago. It consists of one of the Bach unaccompanied suites that Casals made famous, along with works by Handel, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, and Fauré (who was a close friend and carousing companion of the maeI'vstro).

Peled is a big guy at 6'5", making the cello appear about the size of a viola as he cradles it in his arms. He's also very personable, and provided some disarming commentary between the selections intended to get us to loosen up and have FUN. After the Bach, for example, where some portion of the crowd annoyingly clapped between movements (a Miami pet peeve), he assured us that it was perfectly OK, and reminded us that in some times and places in the past it was customary to do so. At times he even launched into the next piece on the program before the applause had died down from the last one, making it feel more like a jazz performance -- quite in contrast to the expectant hush normally required.

Pianist Noreen Polera deftly commanded the resident Bosendorfer behind him and showed the value of being able to specialize in the accompaniment of the cello repertoire.

A good time was had by the sellout crowd. We look forward to our next tickets to this series which is a return engagement of pianist Awadagin Pratt, whom I've reviewed previously.

Jivin' to the Juke

A blast from the past, and it's not ALL about that bass ...

It began with a simple link to a Youtube video that a friend posted on Facebook with the comment that they really liked this version of the song. I nearly didn't look, but something about the preview caught my eye (maybe it was the dress she had on) and I watched. The song was "All About That Bass," the Megan Trainor hit that's been making its own buzz online. But this new group called Postmodern Jukebox was doing it as if it had been written during the golden age of swing, with a trio of vocalists who could harmonize like the Andrews Sisters, and a sense of humor about the whole thing that was infectious.

"Wow," I commented on the Facebook post, "the '40s are alive and well!" Soon I found I had to see it again and share it with people, who universally loved it. These guys were onto something and I wanted to know what it was.

I focused on the singers first, finding that each of them brought something unique to her performance as they took turns doing solos, duets, and finally a trio. Their names are Haley Reinhardt, Morgan James, and Ariana Savalas, and they are part of the "European tour cast" of Postmodern Jukebox. (More on that below.) I learned that Hailey was a number three finalist on The Voice who has her own solo album, as does Morgan James, and that Ariana is related to the actor named Savalas.

Haley leads off "All About That Bass" with a throaty growl on "my momma she told me" and delivers a performance worthy of any classic torch singer. Then Morgan takes over with her own sassy treatment of lines like "from the bottom to the top - HEY!" Finally, after a brief intermission for the bass solo, in which two players work the same instrument at the same time -- and switch places with one another in the middle -- it's Ariana's turn to celebrate the lyric with a smoother touch, arms flailing the air in celebration. The three finish it off with an a capella repetition of the title line, closed out by a bump of the oft-mentioned booty. Delightful every time.

But who was in charge of all this? Was it the bass player? If so, which one? Well, no, it's actually the one musician you don't see in the video because he's hidden behind the piano where he's hard at work stitching this whole thing together. Scott Bradlee is a jazz musician from Long Island who began his career in New York. A few years ago he began experimenting with arranging and performing contemporary songs as they might have been done if sent back in a time machine to an earlier era.

He explains that this is really what jazz musicians have been doing for many years, continually adopting new contemporary works into the repertoire of what our local NPR station calls "America's classical music." But normally that's done by casting them into the form of contemporary jazz, whatever that might be at the time. Bradlee has gone a step further by rolling back the clock.

He's put together a rotating group of vocalists, drummers, bass players, and assorted brass and winds -- even a cello and harp in a couple of places -- who are capable of reproducing the style and energy of everything from Dixieland to Swing and Gospel. And let me be clear -- when I say "reproducing" I don't mean one of those moth-eaten tributes that grace the air of PBS during pledge week. These guys do it as if it has never been done before, with all the fresh energy and sex appeal that made the style so popular in the first place.

It's not just "All About That Bass." Bradlee and his cohorts have produced a series of top-selling albums and a staggering 80+ videos for Youtube with an equally staggering number of views and subscribers. Now on the road for the first time they're selling out venues in multiple countries. With this kind of success it seems clear they've struck a nerve, and I think I know what it is.

One word. Melody.

You may have noticed this key musical ingredient has been mostly absent from contemporary rap. When you can sing the lyrics with a drum you know something is missing. For example,

Dada dada dada dada dada dada DA
Dada dada dada dada dada dada DA

Or maybe for variety something like

Dada DA da dada dada dada dada DA

In this wasteland it's no surprise that someone like Adele can become an overnight sensation by delivering what listeners have been starved for. If you have any doubt, check out this interview with Bradlee and close personal friend Robyn Anderson where they describe having to create a melody for a song that basically was missing one. And as I explained recently, even Bob Dylan is reaching back into the classic American songbook to dredge up those blasts from the past.

An irony in this situation is that we have some great jazz schools in this country -- our own University of Miami is a perfect example -- that are turning out a slew of graduates equipped with the skills they need to rival the old masters of the form. But they emerge from college all dressed up with nowhere to go. The venues that used to offer a place for those hot little combos to play have all dried up. Radio airplay is filled with the above mentioned rap. Even selling jazz recordings is a tough job.

But the success of Postmodern Jukebox offers some hope. They're on such a roll, and their method of accumulating talent is so expandable, that you could even imagine them becoming a kind of Blue Man Group for jazz vocals with branches on tour all around. Hey, it could happen. Even better, they might inspire some competition. Jazz clubs could re-open, and songwriters could begin writing, um, songs again.

Hey, that could happen, too.

Meanwhile, enjoy them while you can. Just to get started you can check out this quick intro on What is Postmodern Jukebox. Then click into their Youtube channel and see what it has to offer. You'll note the interesting minimalist style where a single fixed camera lets you focus on the performance as a whole, just as you would at a live performance in a small club. But whatever you do, don't leave until you've seen these:

"Creep," in which Haley Reinhardt transforms the Radiohead tune from the 1980s into a soulful anthem for anyone who has ever felt unworthy of the one they admire from afar. This knockout is the very definition of singing your heart out. I think I may be in love.

"Barbie Girl," which features Morgan James choreographed as a doll and doing an amazing impersonation of a Theremin while a man behind her pretends to play one in this playful Beach Boys imitation.

"Gangsta's Paradise." Omygod, I never heard the words before Robyn Adele Anderson sang them like this. Just check it out.

"Bad Romance." Ariana Savalas takes Lady Gaga back to the Gatsby era while a tap dancer provides counterpoint. When is the last time you saw a tap dancer? And I forgot to mention, Ariana leads off the song by whistling. When is the last time you heard that since maybe Bing Crosby?

You can also get an insight into Scott Bradlee's own talent by watching him take Twinkle, Twinkle through several decades of style transformations. In another life he might have made a great studio backup man.

And if after watching all that you find you're still not hooked, then you might as well move along because you just don't get it. Maybe, in the words of "All About That Bass," you'd prefer a stick-figure silicone Barbie doll?

Still Dylan After All These Years

Strange shadows in the stranger night ...

There he is, the inimitable face peering out of yet another magazine cover, announcing an article about his latest album. Only this time it's the publication of the AARP, and the album consists entirely of classics from the American songbook that were all recorded once by Frank Sinatra.

Say what? Yes, it's true. We have entered a time warp where the most shocking thing the perennial iconoclast Bob Dylan can do is to slap us upside the head by crooning songs our parents or grandparents (or even great-grandparents) listened to. Then again, why should we be surprised? He's been doing this for about fifty years, continually evolving and moving on just when we thought we had him pegged.

After reading the article I went straight to Amazon to download the album, Shadows In The Night – $1.00 off with a coupon code for AARP members. Yes, he's giving out senior citizen discounts. And he actually says in the interview that if it were up to him he would give the album away to all their readers. Shades of the old Bob, impossible to say how sincere or sarcastic this was.

At first hearing it may be a shock. He's put together yet another unorthodox band with a unique sound. This one features pedal steel guitar, acoustic bass – often bowed – and a soft horn section. “No drums, no piano,” he brags. And the tempos are so slow that even as a fan I'm tempted to ask them to pick it up a bit. That would probably be a mistake, though. As so many before have done, the album grows on you with repeated listening until you understand the wisdom of it and how it is likely just right.

Dylan's voice is less raspy than on the previous album, Tempest, which was sold in Starbucks throughout the land. But his world-weary vocal cords lend a heartfelt air to the collection of songs about love, loss, and yearning with an ache of spiritual overtones. You can hear inklings of his classic whine in lines like “lift me … to Par-a-diiiiiise.” It starts with the title lyrics to the opening song, “I'm a Fool To Want You,” and ends with a plea to the Almighty in "That Lucky Old Sun:"

Show me that river, take me across
Wash all my troubles away.
Like that lucky old sun, give me nothing to do
But roll 'round heaven all day.

He didn't write this, or any of the others, but he says he knows them deeply because they speak to him, and he certainly imparts his own stamp to them. In all, it's a sound you can spend some time with, perhaps fortified by a bourbon or two to slow you down. Have a sip, settle back, and take it in.

The Long History

I couldn't possibly indulge this way if I weren't willing to get nostalgic. How could I not, after listening to this man since my early teens? I still remember my first encounter with him on the floor of the classroom where my age group met weekly at the Unitarian church. One of us, David P___, who hung out at The Flick, our local coffee house, had brought a little battery powered turntable so he could play the Freewheelin' album for us. The eight or ten of us clustered around it, straining to pick out the words from the tiny speaker.

Words. That's what it was about. At a time when pop music was nothing but shoo-be-do-wop and things even more inane (ie, “The One-Eyed One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater”), before even the Beatles had come along to up the ante a bit, here was this troubadour from the middle ages who'd traded his lute for a guitar and started emitting a torrent of poetry set to song that seemed to be exactly what we knew we wanted to hear, and to say what we knew we wanted to say. What an unexpected wonder.

As Joan Baez would later put it in "Diamonds and Rust:"

You burst on the scene already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You stole into my heart

In a few years my music buddy and I had collected every subsequent album, along with the work of Joan Baez, while simultaneously discovering the literature of the Beats. We went to see Joan when she came to Miami, and got to shake her hand afterwards back stage. Alas, I missed Bob when he did the same, but none of his songs escaped us.

By the senior year of high school I had my own record player on the floor of my own bedroom entertaining some friends with illicit wine and Bringing It All Back Home. The words – he had gone electric, but it was still about the words.

In rapid succession came Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde. Then there was The Motorcycle Accident, and The Change. At the peak of his visionary productivity came this sudden hiatus, followed by the folksy and almost comical John Wesley Harding, and then the country-style Nashville Skyline. What in the world was going on? Nothing new, really. As he had been doing all along, he continued going where he wanted and doing what he wanted to do. There were people he left behind from the moment he struck up "Maggie's Farm" at the Newport Folk Festival with electric guitar in hand and the blues-band army of Paul Butterfield backing him up. Others no doubt fell by the wayside when he wandered into born-again gospel. But for many of us he remained one of the background tracks of our lives, even if he receded further into the background.

In my case my close friend Richard was one of the most stalwart faithful, the one who kept insisting that I listen to each new album, and who continued to find revelations in each one. I confess I stopped collecting them all, but several of them made me sit up and listen again. Like the opening of “Hurricane” on the Desire album: “Pistol shots ring out in the bar-room night” – a line worthy of Jack Kerouac, using one of his favorite poetic devices to co-opt an unlikely noun as an adjective – which goes on to warn you, “Here comes the story of the Hurricane.” On top of that it was a return to a classic protest song, one which was instrumental in the retrial and eventual release of the unjustly convicted boxer. Great stuff.

There are too many other twists and turns in this long career to mention them all in anything shorter than a book. And if you're so inclined there are plenty of books to consume. Amazon even has a page called The 20 Best Bob Dylan Books. But the one I recommend is Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz. This work focuses on the evolution of his work more than his life and places him in context, beginning with the origins of folk music and blues and the hymns of the Sacred Harp, working through union and folk songs, tin pan alley, and so on up to date. What comes clear is that not only did Dylan grow out of this rich American loam, but he was completely aware of it and avidly absorbing as much of it as he could at every stage.

Which brings us right back to the kind words he has for Frank Sinatra, and the deep feeling he brings to the songs of a bygone era in the middle of the last century. Once you understand the context it all makes perfect sense. After all this time, he's still Dylan.

Don't take my word for it ... listen to the NPR review.