My Pavarotti

For the past few weeks, we have been hearing about Pavarotti undergoing further treatment for his pancreatic cancer. The news has been cautiously optimistic, until yesterday when Pavarotti’s condition was reported to have worsened. Today we finally heard the news that Pavarotti has left us. I am sure that in the next few weeks we shall be hearing a lot about Pavarotti, the hymns eulogizing the passing of the great tenor, his flamboyant style, and his no-nonsense, anti-establishment approach to widen the opera fan base.

He was not as politically savvy as Domingo. Nor was he as sexually appealing and attractive as Bocelli. He was the raw, unrefined lion on stage, and the relentless businessman off stage. If everything written about him was true, then he was at least as shrewd and ruthless as Howard Breslin would describe him to be. If his public behavior was any guidance as to who he really was, then he must savor his moments as opera’s royal paladin, as evidenced by his frequent, last-minute cancellations of public appearances in the twilight of his career. He was the womanizer who would dump his wife of 35 years to hook up with his 26-year-old secretary.

But there is no question that Pavarotti was a talented tenor. In my opinion, he was possibly the most naturally talented tenor in the 20^th century. Beniamino Gigli and Giuseppe Di Stefano, two of the best tenors of our time, often looked strained and tired when trying to sustain high notes. Domingo, perhaps the modern-day tenor most beloved by opera aficionados, is a great interpreter of opera composer’s works and a great master of tonal quality, but always sounds as though he couldn’t reach a level of vocal projections that he would want, especially between A4 and C5. Without implying to put down any other tenors, Pavarotti seems to have a natural ability to punch high notes with not only rhythmic precision but also superior tonal quality. I am not merely talking about the nine C5s that Pavarotti famously belted out with ease in “Ah! Mes amis,” in Donizetti’s “La Fille du Regiment” at the Met in 1972. I am also talking about how he, in his early years, handled Verdi’s requirement of a Bb4 in pianissimo in “Celeste Aida” in Verdi’s “Aida”. To be sure, Pavarotti wasn’t Franco Corelli, who arguably was the best recorded Radames ever, but Pavarotti never had as nimble a voice as Corelli’s, which made rendering of the pianissimo a lot more manageable. I’m sure when I go back to Pavarotti’s earlier recordings, I would rediscover the beauty of Pavarotti’s voice – a bold but agile voice – like a Ferrari creaming a tight corner or Michael Jordan swooshing a turnaround jumper – effortless to the regular eyes, but magical to those who practice such, day in, day out.

In terms of singing, Pavarotti’s public legacy will be linked to his high notes and his handling of the passaggios. In my opinion, however, his flamboyant and raw style made him the ultimate, purest interpreter of canzone napoletana/italiane: the Marechiares, the O Sole Mios, the Torna a Surrientos of the world, providing a standard upon which all future tenors of the napoletana genre shall be judged. He will, in my mind, forever be linked with the genre, and the genre will, in my mind, always be linked with Pavarotti.

It is incredibly sad to see him go. Had he entered the world in the early 19^th century, he would have left us with nothing tangible except a mythical legacy. But he left us with an incredible amount of recorded music that we and future generations will be able to enjoy. Pavarotti the man has left, but Pavarotti the voice will live and grace us forever.

Obituaries: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The AP (via Yahoo! News).

My first classical music concert in China

The China Philharmonic opened its 2007-2008 Season last night with a heavyweight program featuring the world premiere of a composition by Chinese composer Ye Xiaogang, and the Piano Concerto No. 3 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Ye’s new work, The Lofty Kunlun Mountains, is a monumental piece of music commissioned by and written for the China Philharmonic, and was completed barely a month ago. Continuing his ongoing series of scores featuring the customs and cultures of China’s various regions, Ye borrows from Qinghai province’s instrumental and vocal elements to carve out a substantial piece of work with three contrasting symphonic movements. Kunlun Mountains’ orchestral footprint is similar to that of Ye’s other work, Twilight in Tibet, in that Kunlun Mountains weaves through an intricate balance of rapturous Mahlerian moments and delicate pianissimo harmonics to illustrate the imposing and undulating landscapes of the region. The first movement, “The Lofty Kunlun Mountains”, is a testament to Ye’s frequent practice of east-meets-west ideals in which Holstian orchestral frameworks were gorgeously realized through the application of cascading pentatonic scales. The second movement, “The Ode to the Kunlun Mountains”, is an emotional interlude that reminds the audience of the tranquils of Howard Shore’s middle earth. Its baroque, careful string structures also provide perhaps the most poetic and original moment of the three movements. The third movement, “The Chinese March”, is the most symphonically bold, yet also stylistically least interesting, as if the piece tried to gallop to a Khrushchevian closure. In Poly Theatre’s foyer after the concert, I had a brief moment to congratulate Ye on finishing the composition, but I stopped short, for whatever lame reason including, out of deference, of complaining that Kunlun Mountains, while successful in evoking an impressive array of ethnic elements, lacked a fundamentally unique style that I often attribute to the composer’s other more satisfying compositions.

Rach 3 was performed by Kun-Woo Paik, a Korean-born pianist most famous for his interpretation of Liszt. Last night’s performance was average, although anyone who knows more than a thing or two about Rach 3 would testify that any pianist who can sprint through the extremely difficult, “finger-breaking” piece without major lapses deserves at least a few rounds of standing ovations. And Paik got his share and more, at least half a dozen of them. Paik’s performance wasn’t necessarily bad –in fact, his rendition of Rachmaninoff’s legato moments in the first movement was as lyrical as any I have ever heard –but, on the overall, Paik’s Rach 3 seems to lack a sense of controlled fragility that seems, at least to me, to be the hallmark of Rachmaninoff’s piece. The third movement was also slow –a tad slower than Ashkenazy’s typical, leisurely pace of 15 minutes and a lot slower than Argerich’s exuberant pace at just over 13 minutes (in the legendary RSO Berlin/Chailly recording). To be sure, nobody will ever accuse a pianist of dragging in a performance, although if Paik had admitted that his performance dragged last night, it would not necessarily have been his fault: there were times when it seems obvious that Paik was trying to race the orchestra to a tempo of his liking, only then to be suppressed by the baton of conductor Long Yu. It was not easy to conclude who dragged and who raced, but there were moments when I had a clear impression that there wasn’t enough communication between the concerto conductor and the concerto performer.

In any case, it was an incredible night not least because it was my first time to listen to classical music in Beijing, but also because I always fancied finding out what kind of crowd I would get at a classical music concert in mainland China. I was quite impressed – other than a slight mishap in which an audience sitting not far behind me felt the need to ruffle his/her plastic bag (whose act was then promptly verbally abused and denounced by other audience members nearby) – the crowd was very courteous, and did not clap, contrary to my earlier expectation, between concerto movements. I went to the concert with Carrie, a smart auditor who often lets her disengaged, emotion-less self spill over to her personal life. So it was only fitting that the highlight of my evening was to see her face light up, and her emotions flow, as she raved about Ye’s sweetness and Rachmaninoff’s genius.

Daniel Miller

The current issue of Vanity Fair has an outstanding article about Daniel Miller, the son of Arthur Miller, the playwright, and Inge Morath, Miller’s third wife. Daniel Miller was born with Down syndrome and, according to Vanity Fair, he was placed in a mental institution shortly thereafter.

The article describes Miller as someone who rarely, if ever, visited Daniel at the mental institution. By all accounts, Miller has never publicly acknowledged Daniel’s existence, and certainly not in the memoir, “Timebends”, that he wrote shortly before his death. Even Miller’s closest friends know little, if anything, about Daniel’s existence and whereabouts. Vanity Fair describes Miller’s cool relationship and general lack of empathy for Daniel as a state of denial, a character flaw in Miller that people often discussed privately but rarely exposed on a pedestal, especially during Miller’s lifetime. Appropriately, Vanity Fair also explores whether such powers of denial have any effect on Miller’s writing, and whether Miller’s works should be viewed any differently in light of this chilly, perhaps non-existent, father-son relationship.

The New York Times writes today that while renewed scrutiny of Miller in light of Daniel’s existence may not amount to much new thoughts regarding Miller’s writings, Miller’s stature as a humanist and an empathetic conscience of the human kind will be forever tainted, especially because Miller had always portrayed himself, and allowed others to portray him, as a rigid moralist (his refusal to “name names” in the McCarthy era) and an apt social commentator (his description of Willy Loman as someone who must not be “allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog”).

La Bohème

La Bohème is undoubtedly one of my favorite operas. Coincidentally, there are two pieces written about it today: by Tim Page in the Washington Post, and by Mike Greenberg at Express-News. Greenberg’s article was a fairly standard review of the San Antonio Opera at the Lila Cockrell Theatre. While it is mundane and devoid of the flowering descriptions that usually grace a classical music review, it does serve a good, descriptive purpose:

The traditional sets, built for New Orleans Opera, worked well and looked pretty good, though they fell short of the current state of the art. Tim Francis’ lighting design was fairly basic. The off-the-rack costumes had that off-the-rack look.

Page’s writing, on the other hand, is nothing but mundane. As he writes a preview of Kennedy Center’s upcoming season, he trumphets the social and romantic values of what may be Puccini’s most famous work:

I wonder if there is another opera that so convincingly bewails the horrors of poverty while making most of the resultant hardships seem so romantic. Cold weather permeates “La Bohème,” and yet the impression we take away with us is inevitably that of a suffusion of warmth.

I sincerely hope that when The Egg opens, there will be more opera performances here in Beijing. In the meantime, I will indulge myself in DVDs, and in reviews of performances around the world.

Digital Media

I have recently and heavily involved myself with digital media and Web 2.0. When I was first introduced to myspace and YouTube, I thought they would be more than just a fad, but stopped short of saying that they would eventually revolutionize the way in which we think about media specifically and culture generally. But, after having learned a lot more about this new frontier in digital space, and after having converted myself into a myspace/YouTube addict, I am happy to report that I was wrong, and now I feel very strongly about the power of digital media.

In particular, I am fascinated by how the digital medium democratizes societies by returning power to the people. To borrow from the language of Mario Cuomo and Barack Obama: imagine there is neither a liberal media nor a conservative media but, through community blogging, community reviewing and content syndication in the post-Web 1.0 era, a united media that aggregates the views and experiences of people from all walks of life. Information is no longer fed from the ivory towers of the fourth estate; the collective “we” become the fourth estate.

Internet radio is but one of many examples of social democratization. Pop music becomes popular because of a variety of reasons, but one reason stands out: because radio jockeys play it. While I personally have nothing against radio jockeys (in fact, I admire their skills and up-to-date industry knowledge), I do often question their independence, particularly when radio stations are often controlled by large, profit-driven companies (e.g. Clear Channel in the U.S.). It has been well documented that these large companies, in return for bribes from music publishers (especially the majors), would play records of these publishers as though they were part of the normal day’s broadcast. I doubt that these “partnerships” have subsided after the payola scandals; my guess is that whenever the P&L is part of the equation (for a for-profit business, I suspect it always is), payola schemes will always exist, in one form or the other. It seems to me that people will be willing to partake of immoral activities so long as there are, for example, materially significant advantages. But what if the P&L is no longer in the equation, at least not when we simply want to sample music before buying, anytime we want, without someone sitting in a jockeying booth telling us what is best for us?

In a slightly different vein, I have qualms about society relying too much on a thesis of commerce driven by reviewers sitting atop ivory towers, telling us what is best for us. In many industries such as music, restaurant, film etc., reviews can often make or break a business. Just ask those whose restaurants had to close after an influential critic at a local paper wrote a scathingly bad review, or how some film reels have to be rolled back to the editing room for “retooling” because a thumb-up was missing. This particularly works against smaller players because they may not have the time or the resources to “retool” without collecting a bad slapping in the face before getting a legitimate shot at the market. These reviews, especially before the digital age, are important because they are often the only wide-band means by which a consumer is informed of products or services unless businesses engage heavily in advertising or marketing, or unless they organically grow and manage a word-of-mouth campaign. So long as readership is misled to believe that these reviews, however well-crafted and well-researched, are cultural arbiters of the times rather than exactly what they are –reviews by informed individuals –the information market will always be distorted.

More freedom to sample and consume, due to more leisure time and more disposable income, is certainly starting to dismantle the old status quo, but the current wave of technological innovation is also helping to facilitate change. Last.fm, for example, recommends songs by aggregating user listening habits into democratized social data. Myspace brings unknown musicians to the market without having them to weave through the old agency/radio vetting process or potentially illegal activities. MusicBrainz is a community music meta-database that tells you who else is listening to a particular song and how it is rated by the community-at-large. Many community sites, with focus from restaurants to shops, are allowing users to not only rate products and services but also share their ratings with other users. Power is thus shifting from the ivory tower to the hands of the digitally-connected folk.

Of course, there are still some barriers to entry: literacy, digital connectivity, and broadband penetration. However, these are small barriers to overcome in comparison with the old. I hope that I can write more about these developments in digital media, and how these developments are affecting each of us personally and us collectively, in the future.

Hello World!

This will be my third attempt at blogging. I’ll briefly discuss my first two attempts, as well as what I plan to do with this current endeavor.

My first attempt began back in July, 2001, when I got a new job that required me to move from a large progressive metropolitan city in the American east coast to a conservative suburban hinterland in the American south. For a while, I had difficulty accepting the fact that even the First World has such disparate cultures and ideals: gun control vs. gun ownership; conscious agnosticism vs. faith-based spiritualism; unrelenting pro-choice views vs. devout pro-life beliefs. As I started to think about such issues, I felt the need for a platform to further express myself and capture my thoughts. Thus was the beginning of Beijing Cowboy 1.0. The blog lasted for a not-so-grand period of three months before I decided to shut it down. My main reason for discontinuing was because I felt that my inadequate understanding of American history and culture was exposed in the synthesis of my writing. Another reason was because I didn’t, at that time, use a good authoring system to write my blog with, thus making my blogging affair both tedious and unpleasant.

My second attempt began in earnest in August, 2003, and lasted longer…for about a year. At that time I was introduced to and subsequently fascinated by MovableType, the authoring system that I wished I had when I started my first blog. I chose a topic, traditional media, and began to write profusely about newspaper, TV, and journalism in general. I didn’t harbor any thoughts of being an expert in the field. Nor did I have any aspirations to become a journalist. At that time, I was extremely frustrated by the neoconservative bias that seemed able to tint the media lens through which the average folk saw the world, especially the Iraq war. I felt that while some aspects of neoconservative scholarship have more merits than a traditional liberal would let on, I stood aghast at the sight of the (American) media unreservedly toeing the neoconservative line just as the country marched into an unilateral war. I felt that consent, even if real, was so manufactured, and media so biased to a level that society was collectively made worse off as a consequence. Thus, I started thinking and writing nearly daily (sometimes a few times a day), and managed to build up a decent amount of daily traffic (mostly from people who know me personally). However, the blog eventually fell prey to a deterioration in production quantity (and quality), and subsequently my terminating ax, when I took time away from blogging to engage in local grass-roots politics, in firm belief that I could do more as I threw time and effort into informing voters about their choices.

This version of Beijing Cowboy, 3.0, is set up neither by a sensory overload in a foreign land, nor by a commitment to comment on my perceived vices of the fourth estate. This time, I really want to blog about Beijing, about its people, its culture, its food, and anything that crosses my paths as I explore the city. I find the city to be deeply sensitive to and aware of history, passionately romantic regarding human relationships, steadfastly resilient in respect to defending its culture and pride, and also fanatically open-minded about new ideas and designs. This is a place I’ll call home, at least in the near future, and I hope to blog about it, as well as my life in general, as much as I possibly can.

Super Band

Super Band is an American Idol-like competition for rock bands in China. It is jointly produced by media outlets in Guangzhou and Hong Kong to promote original compositions, to discover new talent, and to nurture a crop of Chinese musicians that have the potential to redefine the country’s rock scene in the coming years.

Zhang Peirong, a friend here in Beijing, told me about Super Band while we downed a few Yanjings in Houhai a few weeks ago. Peirong, by all standards, is quite a character. By day, he labors as a film editor in the city. By night, he is a rocker who hounds the Houhai scene. While he is extremely fluent in and deferential to the history and traditions of rock, he is adamant that China as a nation be proactive in developing its own rock sound. He also informed me of a Super Band regional, and implored me to check it out if I ever want to seriously understand China’s pop music and culture.

I have not been extensively exposed to rock and its history, but decided to give it a try anyways, not least because he was dead right about my severe lack of knowledge in China’s pop music but also because I was very interested in the competition format that has swept through China in the past few years.

And boy, what an experience: impeccable on-stage coordination, exquisite fretboard fingering, assertive vocals…those are some of the things that impressed me most. After nearly four hours of music, I came away feeling a little full and a little empty. Full, in a sense that the experience was wholesome, educating, and different from anything I have ever seen. Empty, in a sense that, despite all the classical training that I was fortunate to get when I was young, I have been cloaked away (in some ways by my own doing) from this other world of music in which passion and creativity flow with the freedom of the mind. It is unfortunate that I didn’t discover this world until now, but it is also fortunate that I have, finally, discovered it. Here are some of the highlights:

Band 1: excellent contrast between two entries; male vocalist was superb in creating a soulful, interactive experience with the audience

Band 8: young but very mature, a careful balancing act amongst the players; it first appeared a little thin and weak but soon emerged as this emotional train that charged all the way to the finale

Band 9: pretty sound, but drummer seemed disjointed from the rest of the group

Band 11: well rehearsed with precise control of instrumental and melodic flow; I love its charismatic and pentatonic-heavy sound.

Band 12: a blend of German punk and novel vocal; the ending was crisp and clean

I wished I had written down the bands’ names. Perhaps I’ll one day dig them up from Super Band’s website.

Zidane

It is quite discomforting to hear how the Frenchmen are not behind their own countryman in the otherwise rather regrettable episode at WC’06. The news commentary has been focused on how Zidane was a bad role model to kids and how Zidane should have controlled his temper.

How do you expect someone to control his/her temper if the taunts, if every bit as true as what has been rumored, were racist? Do you expect to tell your kids how you are not supposed to defend your own dignity, or to fight back when a racist threw an insult at you –perhaps an insult at your culture, your history, and your motherland no less? Headbutting may not be the most prudent choice, but now that it was done, can we focus on not what would have been the more prudent choice, but the root cause of why the headbutting action actually took place? Were racist comments thrown? Did the racist comments, if any, reflect the country’s brutal segregation and the lack of a united national identity, despite nearly 40 years of opportunity to unite the country? Did the comments reflect the French’s inability to make good its sins committed as an imperial colonialist?

As a side note, I also wonder if the commentary would have been different had Zidane been a Gallic Caucasian from Normandy, not an Arab immigrant from a former French colony. Would the protagonist, then, not be the thug and the bad role model, but someone who risked it all to openly confront the racist and the status quo?