Roger Bourland writes about music and life

Time 2020-10-18 11:03:07

Web Name: Roger Bourland writes about music and life

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Bourland update: July 2019 July 27, 2019 Jackson Pollock s paintsGreetings all! As you see here, I have taken a break from blogging for a few years but I am still alive and well and still working hard. Well, truth be told, I have retired from UCLA and given myself permission to slow down my frantic pace of composing after a life of it. I have fallen in love with sewing. Yes, sewing. No, there are no plans to make a new company, but I have filled two closets with jackets inspired by Japanese jackets and vests using old fabric from Japan and other Asian countries, and bringing new life to otherwise abandoned garments and material. So I will sell them all some day in a gallery or on Etsy.I am posting many of my sewing projects on my Instagram account along with lots of photographs. I was amazed to learn that both my mother and my paternal grandmother were both avid sewists, so I may have inherited the bug from them.Mitchell Morris and I are still working on our Frida Kahlo project but are rethinking the format. Today, our working title is SMOKING MIRROR. The title refers to the chipped and polished obsidian mirrors used by holy people in Aztec societies that held magical power to see the future and speak with people long dead. In opera repertoire, there is already Roberto Rodriguez s opera on Frida Kahlo called Frida which is still enjoying success and performances here and there. It follows a similar story arc to the terrific movie by the same name. Gabriela Frank is about finished with her Kahlo/Rivera opera, El último sueño de Frida y Diego scheduled for a 2020 premiere. With these other works in the public eye, we needed to pull back for a while and reassess our project and determine whether to continue, to abandon, or to refashion it into something new. We have decided on the latter, and will update you when we are ready to announce it. My musical language is so utterly different than either composer, so I think there is room for another Frida piece.Although in my sabbatical from blogging, I have posted many things on Facebook, the change in the US political climate has made the experience of reading and posting to FB extremely stressful. Hence, my choice to post photos of things that bring me joy on Instagram and follow like-minded people. (I enjoy looking at pet and family pics on FB, but not IG. I avoid news these days as it is so grim, preferring to skim headlines.) Many of my close friends are media addicts, watching news all day. I can t imagine anything more stressful that I have control over.We left our home in Los Angeles and are now living in the Bay area with two Italian greyhounds, two African grey parrots with many new friends and an abundant garden. My husband and I are coming up on 25 years together. We have been world travelers, blessed to see so many amazing places on this planet. Our next destination is Japan. I find it interesting that over the past 15 years I have fallen in love with two cultures that are very different from my own heritage: Mexico and Japan. Both have amazing histories and have been around far longer than our young country. And, at age 65, I got my first tattoo: a half sleeve by the internationally renown artist, Ben Volt: my fourth midlife, uh, exuberance. I did it to celebrate retiring; surviving a devastatingly painful disease called synovial chondromatosis, finally cured by a team of doctors at Stanford; and turning 65. Having been in a wheelchair for my final term at UCLA, I m happy to report that I have healed, have no pain, and can walk again.I m working with my husband to revisit this blog and update it. And although blogging seems to have faded as a past-time of many in favor of social media I find myself returning to it, in hopes that those who d like to follow me can keep up with me without being under the mixed bag of Facebook and all the drama, meltdowns, fake news, tracking, and venting that seems to go on.I don t attend contemporary chamber music concerts any longer, nor teach. We do attend new and old opera performances offered by San Francisco Opera and Opera San Jose (CA). I have Madonna s new album, Madame X, playing like a radio station constantly in my head. So sexy! (Especially, Crave .) I met Rufus Wainwright briefly before his recent concert in San Francisco. My book about his early songs is about 2/3rds done and may finish it someday. Janelle Monae is my favorite new performer whose acting career is also going great guns. So smart, sexy and brave.My new friend Bert Keely invited me to play keyboard in a band where our first gig was to perform Pink Floyd s DARK SIDE OF THE MOON as a trio. After the third gig, I begged him to add a bass player so that I didn t have to cover that part in my left hand while trying to do the keyboard part as well. He agreed. I had never known this material as I was a college student studying Stockhausen, Stravinsky and Bach in school, turning up my nose at my pop music past. After retiring, I realized that I knew thousands of songs that many would kill to know how to play, so I got over myself, built up my callouses and started playing guitar again.A year ago, I sold 17 of my synthesizers on eBay and used the money to buy two beautiful acoustic guitars. Um, and then I bought some more guitars. Now I need to sell some of them so I can afford my next tattoo!My first hit , championed by the late Gunther Schuller, was SEVEN POLLOCK PAINTINGS (1978). I finally got to visit the Krasner/Pollock house on Long Island and visit his studio. My Instagram account has some paintings that I excised from the floor. The image above is a display of the paints he used—all purchased at the local hardware store that is still there.That should give you a personal update, and forgive me for abandoning this blog. I ll be back.{ 0 comments } El Ruiseñor Mexicano Suite for orchestra from La paloma y el Ruiseñor June 7, 2016 After the premiere of my first opera, LA PALOMA Y EL RUISEÑOR, Opera Director Peter Kazaras suggested I follow in the tradition of composers of yore and make an orchestral suite from the opera. I did just that and wrote it and dedicated it to ORQUESTA SINALOA DE LAS ARTES (OSSLA) and the Director, Gordon Campbell who perform and premiere the work here. EL RUISEÑOR MEXICANO (2016) (Suite for orchestra from La Paloma y el Ruiseñor 30:48)1. Recuerdos2. La tormenta3. Fantasia sarabanda4. El Ruiseñor Canta de Balcón5. La llegada y finaleORQUESTA SINALOA DE LAS ARTES (OSSLA)Gordon Campbell, Music Director and conductorAldo Rodriguez, recording engineer{ 0 comments } Visit to Havana, November 2015 November 18, 2015 I was approached by Parma Recordings about participating in a musical project involving eight composers going to Cuba and working with Cuban musicians in having their works performed and recorded. I initially was disinclined but my guardian angel and spouse Daniel Shiplacoff convinced me to go for it.I was to work with Wilmia Verrier Quiñones and her women s chorus, Ensemble Vocal Luna [pictured above]. They chose my ALARCÓN MADRIGALS, BOOK 3 for the project. Francisco X Alarcón and I are collaborators, and I have set many of his poems. The women sang it beautifully. Recording sessions went very well. Wilmia loved then perfect correspondence between the poetry and the music . So much so, that she offered to put on an all-Bourland concert in a year. I said yes.We spent the week with friends from Parma and the composers. A terrific week of touring within Old Havana and music. A long list of wonderful restaurants. (Neither of us got sick. Drink bottled water; only ice that comes from bottled water. Two of the twenty did get sick.) We never got to Anthony Bourdain s recommendation, but will next time.We rode in modern yellow taxis, late 1950s reconstructed car taxis, and bici-taxis with Cubanos with thunder-thighs that drive you and your luggage around La Habana Vieja and its cobbled streets.We never felt afraid or in danger. We saw a lot of poverty, but the people are supported by the government; they never starve or are without the basics, and all health is free. Thanks to Fidel s sister, LGBT issues are liberal and protected. If a Cuban wants a sex change, the government will pay for it. [sic] The young Cubans I saw are fit, clean, beautiful with great taste in clothes and they all seem to pluck their eyebrows: boys and girls. It was very hot, so clothes were spare. (Look at the photo above to see the fabulous variation in their faces, bodies, skin hues. We heard one woman exclaim: In Cuba we are not black or white––we are Cuban colors! Perfectly clean white seems to be the color of choice among handsome men. It is also the color of the Santeria religion, whose ceremony we bumped into one morning. We saw many near the Capitol in full regalia, all white, coming or going somewhere.International tourists are everywhere. Tourism is Cuba s main economy. But the government run mega-hotels are tired and need major renovation. We stayed in only-recently-opened AirBnB rooms. The first place was modern and well put together. The second was a small flat on the 3rd floor, built for people who are a foot shorter than I am. Daniel threw out his back trying to shave in the mirror. I had to duck going down the stairs. And smoking is allowed everywhere. It s CigarLand. You can legally bring back cigars and rum from Cuba into the US now (up to $400). There are a zillions scheisters in the streets trying to sell you Cohibas Fidel s favorite cigar. They are all fake. Only buy cigars in the government sanctioned places–or if you visit the tobacco fields or the factory.Havana has had to weather hurricanes for its long history. And like many other cities, there are many downtown building that cave in, they become abandoned, trees and plants start growing inside. And they are still that way. The capitol building is newly remodeled, and all the streets around it are getting new plumbling, and gentrification is not far behind.We had lunch looking down on the newly reopened American Embassy. It all became very real. We had lots of photos taken in front and one of the senior went up to the gate asking to have her picture taken there and one of the two guards came to her and insisted she go back across the street.We went to a concert of the 28th Annual Havana Contemporary Music Festival. Throughout, we had to look at the alter, and the only thing on the wall was an enormous painting of Joseph with the baby Jesus on his shoulder. I kept staring at it and realized it was Fidel. St Fidel with hat or cigar, and his shoulder was bare. But it WAS Fidel.There are many stories to tell, but this one was the one that stood out: I was chatting one morning with our flat managers, two sisters and a daughter, in Spanish (YES they speak REALLY quickly), in comes a slender Bob Marley cousin type neighbor who teaches Spanish and Dance in a local arts school. We strike up an animated conversation. He is completely generous about having us come to his studio to see his dance troupe, and offered to teach us fun Cuban dances. I told him about my upcoming ballet in Mazatlán and gee, wouldn t it be great if you could fly out to hear it. He turned and translated it all the three women and they all burst out in hysterical laughter. Lesson learned: it is very difficult to get out of Cuba unless you have legitimate work that the Cuban government approves of. The notion of going to Mexico is also out of the question because it is near the US and they could seek asylum in the US and get it and never come back.Claude Debussy allegedly said: Music is a jealous mistress. I have found that I cannot be a photographer while I m in the middle of composing music. So I am thrilled that Daniel has rekindled his love of photography and has chronicled our voyage in photos and is editing them now. Old Havana is a photographer s dream. We were completely cut off from the world. No internet or cell phone connection. We laughed and realized that something horrible would happen in the world and we wouldn t know about it until we got back. The 11/13 Paris terrorist attack happened and we didn t find out about it till the 15th, in an airport in Panama City.The lack of internet has an interesting effect on the city: people are out on the streets and in parks talking, visiting. Very few have their heads buried in their phones like the rest of the world. I look forward to a day when the world can put away their devices and get to know each other anew and in person.{ 0 comments } Researching original voices for our new opera November 17, 2015 I m doing homework for Mitchell Morris and my new opera, FRIDA AND THE SMOKING MIRROR. The seven characters are Frida Kahlo, Tezcatlipoca [pictured above] Diego Rivera, Isamu Noguchi, Josephine Baker, Leo Eloesser (Frida s doctor) and Leon Trotsky. I have made a rough decision on who is what range, but I wanted to see what I could find in terms of hearing their actual speaking voices. So far, I have had no luck with Frida. But today I stumbled across this Pathé gem of Leon Trotsky giving a speech in English in Mexico. Not a particularly pleasant voice. I m trying to imagine what voice type he might be: a tenor? a pinched throat baritone? Not a man of long tones, as FDR might do. Short and snappy.To contrast, here is a (pale) recording of Diego Rivera s voice. It seems a bit lower than Trotsky s. More shouting. His sentences bounce between a low note, high note, and ends in the middle. The video has an impressive array of photos from his life.This next video shows a getting to know you moment for Diego, Frida, Trotsky and his wife. The interaction is fascinating.This video has a terrific collection (bleeding chunks) of Frida in moments of her life that I ve only read about. The final scene was a shocker!Isamu Noguchi had an affair with Frida. Here is a video of Noguchi overseeing an installation of his work. His voice sings. He has a huge range of pitch in his voice. The duration of his syllables is completely different.Here we get to hear Josephine Baker. I am so used to hearing only her singing voice, it took a minute to realize it was her. She has a gentle singing voice, a little breathy, many tones and intensities. I love how she soars up into a range for an entire sentence, hover, dance and then come down.The last (real) character is Dr Leo Eloesser, her doctor of long standing. There is a cassette recording in the library at UC Berkeley. I guess I ll have to go there and listen to it.{ 0 comments } Press conferences May 23, 2015 Raúl Rico coordinated several press conferences for the opera. I was delighted to learn later that the premiere was widely publicized throughout Mexico. Scott Dunn and I had one interview with Raúl Rico as our faithful translator. (This has inspired me to become fluent in Spanish so that I don t ever have to rely on translators, and besides, it s a beautiful and great language.) The second interview involved town scholar, Enrique Vega, a professor and the go-to man with any questions regarding Mazatlán history, including Ángela Peralta. Raúl set up this little panel discussion to go over what Mitchell and I put in the opera about Angela Peralta, and what ACTUALLY happened. Fact versus fiction. Most people in attendance said they liked OUR story better.{ 0 comments } Meta meta February 5, 2015 My spouse kept telling people that my opera was a meta opera and by that, he meant: • this is an opera about an opera singer (Angela Peralta)• an opera that takes place in Mazatlán and that will be premiered in MazatlánAnd there was another one. Act 1 involves a ship ride from La Paz to Mazatlán over the Sea of Cortez. Squalls, called chubascos can come up at any time and just as quickly go away. Just after this picture was taken (above) it started raining. It was Hurricane Vance going over. The streets outside our rehearsal turned into rivers. The room we rehearsed in at the Casa Haas, had a glass roof over it, and unfortunately leaks when it pours rain. So the singers got a bit wet, and they had to compete with the sound of the pouring rain on the glass roof.I loved it. In that I often compose while listening to recordings of rain and thunder, it was perfect for me. We had our own personal chubasco.{ 0 comments } Arriving early to listen to voices December 13, 2014 [The next group of posts were written after the premiere of the opera.]Opera director and friend Peter Kazaras insisted that I meet with the singers as early as possible. As our performance was a combination of students and faculty it is especially important to have that early meeting. Peter explained that singers internalize their music, becoming a kind of muscle memory. It s easy to make note changes for instrumentalists: Clarinet, that is a B flat in measure 47 and they change the note. Singers have to change a lot more making that change, it has to become part of their musculature, their muscle memory. So seven weeks before the premiere, conductor Scott Dunn and I flew to Mazatlán to meet with the soloists and the chorus.I made changes to the vocal parts throughout the rehearsals, some permanent and some adjusted to the voice on the part. There were occasional textual adjustments where the wrong syllable was on the wrong beat which required a little rhythmic offsetting. I also decided to add choral parts to one aria and at the very end of the opera. This was tricky business but they all learned their new parts by the premiere.I was blessed to have Raúl Rico as the producer and godfather behind the project. The opera would never have happened had he not believed in the work. His work as the director of Cultura/Mazatlan is terrific, besides the fact that my opera was a part of his season. The publicity for the opera was amazing. There were posters all over town, and even in the customs area as you arrive into the airport had large posters. We heard that there were radio spots all over Mexico about the opera. Raúl called a press conference the week Scott and I were there, and we were happy to attend a room full of reporters and photographers. I told Raúl that my Spanish was not yet ready for the press conference as I hadn t yet learned past or future, to which Raúl responded: Perfect! He nonetheless served as my faithful translator. Scott s Spanish is better than mine so he fielded some questions in Spanish.{ 0 comments } Scott Dunn: The art of collaboration November 7, 2014 I have been blessed in my recent collaboration with pianist, conductor Scott Dunn who will be conducting the world premiere of my opera, La Paloma y el Ruiseñor at the Teatro Angela Peralta in Mazatlán, Mexico on November 14 and 15, 2014.Having scored several feature films, I have learned the value of cutting ——this happens on all levels of the film industry, but in music it means that just because a composer provides good music for a scene, if, in the mind of the director, the music is not helping or doesn t capture the mood, he asks that the music be rewritten. All film composers, from Danny Elfman and John Williams to beginning film composers, do rewrites. My college professor in music history, Lawrence Gushee, often complained that contemporary music of the 20th century suffered due to a lack of collaboration, or feedback from others (I simplify his comments here). Every damn note was sacred and they wouldn t consider cutting anything. It s just not in the culture of concert composers of the 20th/21st century to make cuts. I encourage composers who are reading this to reconsider and learn from Hollywood. And opera. Opera composers regularly revised and cut their operas to make them better. Puccini didn t have the luxury of workshops where composers could try out their work in private: he had full blown performances and was criticized in the press and from the audiences, and based on that he made changes to all of his operas. The critics and audiences were, in essence, his collaborators. They told him: this doesn t work for me, this part drags, this aria goes on too long. My collaborator in the 1990s, John Hall, who directed opera and music theater at UCLA, was a terrific collaborator in our cantatas Hidden Legacies and Flashpoint/Stonewall. He never minced words: Roger, this is boring; this doesn t work; you ve got to be kidding; or just a look he d give to let me know what I had written wasn t up to snuff. In the 1980s, I scored three feature films and in every one there were rewrites: nice music, Roger but it doesn t work for me. Rewrite it. And I did, without attitude (with a few exceptions where I stood my ground).This is all background to the opera we are working on now. Scott Dunn has been a marvelous collaborator. The Mitchell Morris libretto was adapted into Spanish by Placido Domingo Jr. Placido s work was terrific: he worked hard to fit Spanish into the music that was originally written in English, and avoided changing rhythms wherever possible. And despite his respectful work, I decided to make a completely different version for the Spanish edition. Spanish just doesn t line up with English. Scott was not as gracious as Placido. He d say: NO! You need to rethink many of your melodies so that they flow more convincingly in Spanish. Placido was appreciative of Scott s intolerance of preserving the original rhythms, and embracing the beauty and flow of the Spanish language. Words, notes, rhythms are changed, all done to make a better, more understandable and dramatic work. I had to get over myself and take the advice of my collaborator(s).But Scott s collaboration didn t end there. We went over every note in the orchestration, making sure it would effectively accompany and not drown out the singers. I gave him credit on the title page for that assistance.As rehearsals are going on now, we are constantly making changes, cuts and adjustments to make the opera a better work of art and piece of entertainment. The cast sees all these changes being made in real time and it makes them realize that this is a work in progress. I have made changes to most of the leading roles as well, adjusting and tailoring the music to the their voices and to be sure that they can be heard over the orchestra. Last night we cut a minute and a half from an aria that went on too long.When I told Scott I was writing this article, he said it should be called RB: the art of collaboration. LOL. True, but finding the right match in collaborators is not always an easy job. Scott has been a terrific collaborator and friend during this whole process. So I raise my hat to my wonderful collaborator. The opera is a better piece of music with his help.{ 0 comments }

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