Gut Reaction

As I come down from a particularly hard, yet musically fulfilling opera season, I find that I need to hear music more than ever. I've spent a lot of time (for various reasons) with a wide variety of music from different genres.

As I immerse myself in the sounds, I'm surprised at the multiplicity of reactions. Listening yesterday to the Met broadcast of Satyagraha, I was struck by the sounds I was hearing and surprised that I was having an emotional reaction to that music. I can't say that I love it and it definitely requires a deeper acquaintance for me to fully understand, but it seems like something I will need to explore.

Years ago I realized that there was music that I might appreciate and admire (from an analytical and structural standpoint perhaps), but that didn't move me and that I would therefore never pine to hear (except for intellectual stimulation). Then there is music to which I have strong visceral reaction and be drawn to over and over again.

There is something about the second act ensemble in Puccini's La rondine that gives me chills. The music is not especially distinguished and certainly inferior to many of his other works (and those of others) and yet I react to it with a feeling in my gut that signifies a connection. I can't explain it, but it is feeling I love having.

I remember the first time I heard the third act ensemble of Verdi's Otello. I had a similar reaction. Yesterday I was reading and listening to Bill Charlap's Live at the Village Vanguard when I was struck by "Autumn in New York" and had to stop everything I was doing. I was listening to some tracks from Springsteen's Born to Run and had the same reaction. I couldn't concentrate on anything else and that feeling in my gut came back.

That feeling is so difficult to describe, but which I relish like a child waiting for Santa to come. That feeling is just one of the reasons that music is so important to my life.

And then it was over...

I can't help but be sad at the end of another opera season. It seems amazing that less than 24 hours ago, there was a performance going on, the end of a long weekend and an amazing amount of activity.

And now many have already left town and the rooms that were just yesterday bustling with activity, are quiet. So inside my gut there is a slightly empty feeling, knowing that tomorrow there won't be something else on our stage.

But on the other hand...

I'm tired. It's been a tough year and a half and the culmination of the activity was not the sense of joy and relief that I had anticipated. It was coupled with complaints and negativity and frankly I'm just over it.

When you work hard on a project and see it to its end, you expect a certain amount of validation and gratitude at the end. When it doesn't come, it is pretty deflating.

I'm looking forward to making art again, some time soon. But first I need a few good nights of sleep.

What I Don't Know

I imagine since birth, I've always taken a very methodical approach to just about everything. In learning new operas, I always searched out the "best" recording, pulled out the libretto and/or score and studied it faithfully. As my repertoire spread I always looked for some authoritative source to give me the full scoop and the work and what I should find in it.

Perhaps it is advancing time, but I now find that approach limiting. Especially as my interest in new genres increases, I find the whole studious way of going about it detracts from and discourages, rather than enhances my enjoyment.

Case in point: I have had a middling interest in jazz for many years, but it's one that I have never able to fully indulge. I think I was intimidated by the breadth of the available literature and my total ignorance of the seminal figures in it. As a result I was never able to fully get my head around it.

More recently I've availed myself of some online resources. These lacks liner notes or other sign posts that I would normally use to immerse myself in the music. Instead, I've loaded it onto my iPod and have taken to listening to it, initiated, in my car or when jogging.

And instead of inhibiting my enjoyment I'm finding two things. First is that I'm listening in a much more active way. I'm searching out the signposts that mean something to me and not the preconceptions of a critic. Secondly is that I'm enjoying the music in a much less studied way and therefore new way. It's a different, not necessarily better path to finding how the music moves me. To be moved be it, is really my ultimate goal.