it looks so easy
have to remind self that they
make it look easy

I betcha that readers think I am going to tell some sort of sports based story along the lines of one Sunday afternoon in a park in Ann Arbor back when I was in college, I was playing in a pick up football game with my buddies and with the sun setting behind us as we ran a play, I looked back to the quarterback only to lose everything in the sun EXCEPT for the football, which he threw to me in a straight line with the Sun so that all I saw was a bright orange backdrop with black dot of the ball perfectly eclipsing the Sun coming right at me and I held out my arms and the ball literally slid into my hands as I was running at top speed and I turned and ran all in the same motion and scored a touchdown.

It was the best pass-catch play of my life.

It was so good, that everyone on the field had to stop and watch and then applaud.

I was pretty proud of it myself.

I made it look easy.

Walking home we cut across the athletic campus and out on one of the practice fields was a couple of Michigan football players.

We were tossing our ball around and it got away and rolled out on the field and I raised my arm and called out, l’il help??

One those players nodded, picked up our ball and with a flick of his wrist, tossed it back to me.

I mean, that’s what it looked like but somehow it was like he fired a bullet at me.

The ball came at in a blur and I held out my hands, not to catch it, but to fend it off.

It smacked my hand and it felt like it took my arm off at the shoulder.

Ouch, Ouch, OUCH! I thought but at loud I yelled “THANKS” as best I could.

Any thought of my great play faded in the light of this one little toss.

This one little toss at the major college sports level.

They make it look so easy.

But I am not going to tell you that story.

What reminded me of how folks can make things look so easy was an odd video clip I found online.

I was searching for a piece of music by Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach and very much by accident clicked on this other link.

Before I go any further we have to enter the world of suspended disbelief.

Now safely within those confines, this video is kind of the old MTV music videos that tells a story around the playing of a piece of rock and roll music.

In this case though, the piece of music is the the aria Kommt, ihr angefocht’nen Sünder from Mr. Bach’s Cantata No.30 “Freue dich, erlöste Schar.

The story told by the video, there is no dialogue, is that Mr. Back planned for the aria to be song by his 11 year old son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.

Wilhelm discovers that the Bach family maid has an incredible voice and he knows that women are not allowed to sing in Church at time.

Young Willie fakes a sore throat and talks the maid into singing behind him in the choir while he lip syncs knowing full well that his Dad (Mr. Bach) will see through the charade and find out who is singing.

Got it?

Remember we are in the world of suspended disbelief.

And I watched this unfold with a mixture of disbelief and unadulterated pleasure.

First off the movie making itself of this little bit of movie, the camera work, the lighting, the pacing is all really really good.

I mean really really good.

Then the piece of music selected, the aria, which I have never heard of, the music itself, is so effortlessly effortless as are the musicians.

Then there is the voice of the soloist.

Turns out she is a mezzo-soprano named Magdalena Kožená.

Never heard of her.

Wish I had.

Remember we are in the world of suspended disbelief.

The video of her of her singing in character as the maid, again so effortlessly effortless is charming.

In the magic of the world we are in, she just lets the music out as if she wasn’t singing, but as if these sounds were captured inside her.

All in all, this little clip gives a 5 minute escape from the real world to the world of suspended disbelief.

There are days when I would call this gift priceless.

Taken together, the whole package, the music, the performance, the video, all in 5 minutes, all looks so easy, as if any one could have produced it.

They made it all look so easy.

And here is my mystery?

Where did it come from?

Is a clip from another, longer movie?

Is this the entire piece?

I began searching the World Wide Web.

The clip itself is on YouTube in at least three versions.

It is in the Youtube comments that I have been able to get any information.

One comment from 2016 said, “Skvělý režijní nápad Ondřeje Havelky propojil Bachovu kantátu s uvěřitelným příběhem o tom, jak ženy pronikly na kostelní kůry. Výborný představitel J.S. Bacha, životní role 🙂 A samozřejmě úžasná Magdalena – a to má ten klip už skoro dvacet let …”

Thank goodness the GOOGLE TRANSLATE now comes with Language Detection and the Google detected Czech and translated this as:

Ondřej Havelka’s brilliant directorial idea connected Bach’s cantata with a believable story about how women infiltrated church choirs. The excellent representative of J.S. Wow, the role of a lifetime 🙂 And of course the wonderful Magdalena – and that clip has been around for almost twenty years…

So this clip was made maybe back in 1996?

It was in another comment that I came across this information.

If anyone wants to own this video on a DVD, or if you wonder if this is a part of a larger video or movie, it seems that this is simply a short ‘music video’ that is available (officially) only as an ‘Easter egg’ on the 2-CD set titled, “Magdelena Kozena – Enchantment”, Deutsche Grammophon #00289 477 6153. It is a hidden MPEG video file on the first of the two CDs, and in order to access it, you must use your computer (not a regular CD or DVD player).

No kidding.

So …

All that work.

All that effortlessly effortless effort to create, produce and record this little video was all … just for … fun.

It all looks so easy.

What was going through folks head when at a production meeting, someone raised their hand and said, You know what would be neat? If we …

I am not so stupid as to think that this video was not created with a purpose in mind but in the end …

Still …

If you bought this CD, then put the CD in your computer to play and instead of playing the cd, but looked at the files in Windows File Manager and you saw this video file and you clicked on it, all by chance, you got to see this video.

There is something widely satisfying about that.

Charming.

I think Mr. Bach would have loved this.

I have to ask.

What else is out there.

(If the player below doesn’t work – click here.)

It cannot be taught
mysterious transmission
stage to audience

I saw him play in 1995.

When I came back to Grand Rapids Michigan, when I got out of college in 1985, the last thing I was planning to do was to come back to Grand Rapids.

What would I do in Grand Rapids after several years in the vibrant arts culture of Ann Arbor?

So I ordered season’s tickets to the Grand Rapids Symphony.

I ordered the cheapest pair of tickets I could get.

I wasn’t student anymore but I had my student ID from college and I filled in the order blank for student tickets that were down down down front in the 2nd or 3rd row of the Orchestra Pit of DeVos Hall where the GRSO performed and they processed my order without any questions.

The funny thing is that for the next 10 years or so, or until I got married and our kids made getting out a little more problematic, I kept renewing my student tickets and the GRSO never asked if I was still a student and I kept sitting down down down front.

There may have been some downside to sitting so close.

Maybe the sound was better further back.

But with most of the audience behind me (including once, my Mother, who went to a concert with some friends and sat in the balcony, when I was there with a young lady, so that, yes, my Mom went on my first date with my wife), it made the setting intimate.

There was the night that Christopher Parkening came out to play an encore just as the audience quit applauding and started their dash to the wine bar.

He took a step out on the stage to silence and the backs of all the patrons making their way out and, I felt, looked right at me in the second row and shrugged.

I started to clap as loud as I could which caught the attention of other people in the audience who turned to see what was going on and seeing Mr. Parkening with guitar standing on the empty stage, also started to clap.

Enough people returned to their seats that Mr. Parkening came out to center stage and played a sweet little encore.

Before he began though, he stopped, looked at me (I felt) then the crowd and said, “It was truly one of those moments where you don’t know what to do.”

Grand Rapids’ concert audiences were famous for their quick exits at halftime.

One concert, the featured soloist, a cellist, was waiting for the crowd alone on stage, AFTER intermission.

As the crowd took their seats, the cellist said that we had been so kind with our applause that he came out to play an encore … but we had left … so he waited for us to come back.

I am sure there were better seats then the pit but I loved it.

I felt the soloist was playing just for me.

Never more so the night in 1995 that Andre Watts played.

Mr. Watts had presence and you felt it the moment he came on stage.

You have all been to recitals or those summer holiday weekend Sunday’s when someone’s kid is tasked with playing the offertory in church.

You see these poor people and the phrase “deer in the headlights” is made plain.

Andre Watts came out with confidence flowing freely.

He sat at the piano without a score and looked right at me.

Confident.

Determined.

And having a great time.

He sat in crouch, and I can still see it, more like a catcher in a baseball game, his left hand on his left leg, hanging down low as if to signal the next pitch and with his right hand, he called the first notes of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto out from the piano.

The audience was inconsequential to the setting as if this was something personal between Mr. Watts, Mr. Beethoven and the piano and at the same time the audience was integral to the setting as Mr. Watts brought us with him into the music.

Mr. Watts died on July 14, 2023. (read Obit for the NYT)

His obit quoted from a review of a performance in 1970 that stated: “He has that kind of personal magic that makes an Event of a concert, and Philharmonic Hall had the electric feeling that occurs only when an important artist is at work,” Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times wrote in 1970. “It cannot be taught, this mysterious transmission from stage to audience, and Mr. Watts has it in very large measure.”

Decades later, living in Atlanta, for Christmas my wife got me Atlanta Symphony Tickets for a performance in the spring of 2020 featuring non other than Andre Watts.

The thoughtfulness of this gift was off the charts.

I looked up the concert and saw that Mr. Watts was scheduled to play “Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major”, composed by Maurice Ravel.

This piece was famous and then made familiar by an episode in the TV show M*A*S*H.

Famously, the piece was commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during World War I and is composed to be played by the left hand only.

Familiarly the piece was featured in the TV show when the character, Major Winchester, gets the sheet music for a young soldier, who had been a concert pianist and lost his arm in combat.

But why was Mr. Watts playing this piece?

Sad to report that Mr. Watts was dealing with nerve damage in his left hand.

Mr. Watts knew of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major and transcribed it for the right hand.

This new transcription was the featured piece for the performance that night.

April of 2020.

According to the obit, At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Mr. Watts, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer in 2016, had been planning a feat: He would play Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in a version that he had reworked for the right hand (his left was recovering from a nerve injury).

Ultimately, Mr. Watts was unable to perform the concerto because of health problems and the pandemic. He mostly stopped playing the piano after the concerts were canceled, instead spending time with students.

April of 2020.

We got an email from the Atlanta Symphony that the concert had been cancelled due to Covid.

So far as I know, Mr. Watts never performed it.

That is not to say that music dropped out of his life.

His wife said that music had sustained him throughout his life, beginning with his demanding childhood and through his health struggles.

“Music was how he endured and how he survived,” she said. “When he actually played, then he was happy. It just really lifted up his soul.”

The obituary in the New York Times ends with this quote from Andre Watts:

“Your relationship with your music is the most important thing that you have, and it is, in the sense of private and sacred, something that you need to protect,” 

I think I learned that on that night, in Grand Rapids, in DeVos Hall, when Mr. Watts played Beethoven just for me.

Something private.

Something in some sense, I want to protect.

The gift of music.

Mr. Watts has died.

As the writer John O’Hara said: “George Gershwin died July 11, 1937, but I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.”

explain my latest
predicament way that might
provoke sympathy

Who hasn’t watched the end of the movie A Christmas Story as Ralph works out how he will explain to his parents that he did not almost shoot his eye with is BB Gun and not thought of a time when they worked out an explanation of their latest predicament in a way that might provoke sympathy?

I came across the line, I wasn’t troubled by this in the least. As I sat in my parents’ driveway, trying to figure out how to explain my latest predicament to them in a way that might provoke some sympathy … in an interview with Scott Bradlee as he explained how performing with his band live, at the paint counter in a Walmart, where he worked, got him fired from his job at the paint counter at Walmert.

From this humble beginning, according to wikipedia, Mr. Bradlee went on to start “Postmodern Jukebox, originally known as Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, is a rotating musical collective founded by New York based pianist Scott Bradlee in 2011. Postmodern Jukebox is known for reworking popular modern music into different vintage genres, especially early 20th century forms such as swing and jazz. They have toured North America, Europe, and Australia; often simultaneously due to the extensive discography and the numerous artists and performers involved in the project. Postmodern Jukebox has amassed over 1.9 billion YouTube views and 5.8 million YouTube subscribers since its introduction in 2011.

Each week, Postmodern Jukebox, or PMJ, releases a new video on YouTube. Although originally most were filmed casually in Bradlee’s apartment living room, sets became more elaborate over time. The band has covered songs by artists ranging from Lady Gaga and the Strokes to Katy Perry and the White Stripes. Since their beginnings as a small group of friends making music in a basement in Queens, New York, Postmodern Jukebox has gone on to feature 70 different performers and tour six continents.”

If you have never heard or seen any of these videos, I have to ask you to click over to PMJ and listen to some of their productions.

The music, the voices, the voice of Morgan James, the productions, and the video are just incredible bits of sunshine on the musical landscape of the internet.

I have no musical ability.

Can’t sing.

Can’t play an instrument.

But I can listen with the best of them and the music of the PMJ is some the best music out that is there just for the fun of listening to.

I was searching for something else about PMJ when I can across the Billboard interview with Mr. Bradlee when he said the above quote and the idea that he got his start by being fired by Walmart … well, it just made it all that much better.

Here is the link to You Tube video page and here are two of my favorite production pieces.

step by step by step
bach by bach by note by note
each placed, nothing missed

Last Sunday found us at the the Grace Coastal Church of Okatie, South Carolina.

There was one of those Church moments when the pianist stopped during an intro to a hymn and announced that her piano was out of tune.

“It’s one of those digital piano’s,” she said, “I know I just have to press a button to reset it … but I don’t know where that button is.”

And she got up and walked across the platform to the old grand piano and the picked up where she had left off.

One of those moments of natural comic relief that make church chuch.

The service was old fashioned to the point that all the lights were on and everyone, and I mean everyone sang.

And in this time of post covid, they even took up an offering by passing things hand to hand.

For an old church veteran like me, an offering meant an offertory.

The musical interlude before the sermon.

For a small Presbyterian low county church, I did not expect much.

For a small Presbyterian low county church, I wasn’t ready for what happened next.

That pianist, who already admitted she couldn’t tune a digital piano, sat down at the keyboard and pulled off a minor miracle by effortlessly pulling notes out of that old grand piano in a charming rendition of Orchestral Suite No.3 in D major (BWV.1068).

She played it slow, so slowly but on the beat.

Each note sounding alone but part of the chain.

The magic of Bach, the progression of the notes, each one, like one step following the next and never a misstep.

Each step following the next in a way that, to me, I have to say HOW and at the same time, HOW COULD IT BE ANYTHING ELSE.

I was sitting in a small, small Presbyterian low county church.

But the music took me far away.

I don’t know.

It’s been so long that I have had opportunity to hear live music.

This was so unexpected.

This was so charming.

I am sure I am making way more of this than anyone else there, or that anyone should, but it was, for a me, the truest moment of prayer and of grace with the gift of these notes, in this arrangement played in this way, that I have had in a long time.

Folks, let me tell you, if God lets the odd moment like this happen, and believe, not really by chance, what can happen when he really puts his mind too it?

Odd.

So much is given.

Boy, Howdy, but much is going to be expected!

They say Mr. Bach could set back and let these musical progressions pour out of his fingers without a thought.

All I can think of is how?

So I don’t think.

I just let the moment be that moment.

And I thanked God for it.

BTW, with the magic that is the internet, I was able to find a video of the church service and rip the audio of this simple musical moment and you can click here to hear it.

It isn’t a quality recording, but it is great at the same time and you close your eyes and imagine a small sunlight church with morning coming in the windows and nothing else to do for a minute but listen and as they say, know that God is God.

Yes, there is baby crying at the start … live music, what can you say.