Saturday, October 31, 2020
Sunday, October 25, 2020
MUSIC REVIEW 014:: Mar10 - THE NIGHT WITCHES
The Night Witches is an opera composed and performed by Mar10. Best spoken in his own words::
" THE NIGHT WITCHES is the end result of a labor of love begun around 2010.
Originally, I conceived it as a total improvisation, following only the lyrics. Vocals and all instrumentation would be improvised. As Chairman of the Oxford Cultural Arts Commission (in Oxford, CT), I attempted to resurrect the Nine Mile Players theater group by using my play/musical as a springboard for actors, musicians, and dancers to tell this story. Unfortunately, life certainly gets in the way, and things fell apart. Not forgotten. Just on the back burner, always being tweeked. Until now. It is complete and it is dedicated to my Muse, Karen. Without her encouragement I would have cast this aside, years ago. Thank you, my forever love.
Covid has us all under it's thumb for now, but my isolation began over 2 years ago with a Lung cancer diagnosis and treatments.
With a compromised immune system, I locked myself down. This afforded many musical opportunities. In particular, live videos. I have over 230 to date. These spontaneous, looping jams kept my chops up and offered me song ideas for The Night Witches as a complete song cycle. It is in essence a love story.
Since then I have completed my History based Musical, die Nachthaxen.
It is live, start to finish, warts and all.
I present it this way for documentations sake.
Also, for a few other reasons.
Since my access to professional recording equipment is limited, I've had to work with my old Windows XP computer which barely runs my Sonar 7 recording program. Since I can't predict when it will give up the ghost, I felt a live performance of TNW will at least present a BLUEPRINT for my vision, which includes a small orchestra, choreography, acting, and 3 female leads! I can perform the whole piece on my own but I would dearly love to replace my croaky, unstable, (yet surprisingly powerful with a decent ear), voice, with the more dulcet tones of a female(s). Considering this was written about one female in particular, and it remains on the to do list in the post Covid world.
While reading the NY Times for a friend afflicted with Alzheimer's, I came across the obituary of this remarkable woman.
Thus began my obsession.
Nadezhda Vasiliyevna Popova was born Dec. 17, 1921, in what is now Dolgoye, Ukraine. She planned to become a teacher or a doctor, until one day a plane landed near her home and she met the pilot.
“I had thought only gods could fly,” she said in an account published in the book “A Dance With Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II,” by Anne Noggle. “It was amazing to me that a simple man could get in a plane and fly away.”
Ms. Popova joined a flying club and later graduated from an aviation school. When the war started, she was working as an instructor. She said that she decided to join the military after losing her brother in the war and after watching Germans abuse her townspeople.
“I saw the German aircraft flying along our roads filled with people who were leaving their homes, firing at them with their machine guns,” she said. “Seeing this gave me feelings inside that made me want to fight them.”
Over the course of the war, Ms. Popova said, she fought in Belorussia, Poland and Germany. In 1942, she was shot down in the North Caucasus. Retreating with the infantry, she met her future husband, Semyon Kharlamov, also a decorated pilot. They were married for many years until his death; together they had a son, who grew up to be a general in the Belarusian air force. A complete list of survivors could not be determined.
Minerva, an academic publication on women and the military, cited Soviet records indicating that the women’s regiments flew more than 30,000 combat sorties. Their ranks produced at least 30 Heroes of the Soviet Union — about a third of all women so honored — and at least three fighter aces.
Decades after the war, Ms. Popova, who often was called Nadya, reflected on the perils she had endured. “At night sometimes, I look up into the dark sky, close my eyes and picture myself as a girl at the controls of my bomber,” she said, “and I think, ‘Nadya, how on earth did you do it'?" - Mar10
Considering it is one person performing everything live in real time (alongside minimally pre-programmed layers) the continuity of the story is not lost on the listener. Besides the clear storyline the album is highlighted with timbre driven guitar solos morphing alongside the melodies to the song. Mar10 is a really spectacular guitarist mind you so the morphing solos really accent the motifs and themes of the songs the way a good Pink Floyd album would.
His drum programming, both sample wise and rhythmically is deft and clear. Perhaps the most memorable element of this record itself is Mar10's superbly powerful voice and clever lyrics. There is a great amount of awesome synth bass and some really refined looping tricks. Its hard to explain the catchiness of songs within a modern any modern opera but Mar10 tells the story with whimsical terms and memorable tunes. The album concludes with a beautiful cacophony of noises into the most beautiful song of the opera with Mar10 repeating "and quiet flows the don.." in harmony with himself.
This is definitely a record for progressive rock fans but the songs have an appeal that would go well beyond that world. His guitar playing might really be the showstopper with a really fresh, dynamic style that sounds great on all his records. I think this is a great release for this time right now due to it being confidently upbeat and positive. The symbol of female aviators antagonizing Nazis is one that seems totally appropriate for this day and age. Kudos to Mar10 on his hard work to bring this modern classic to fruition.
Saturday, October 24, 2020
MUSIC REVIEW 013:: The Always Right Reverend Doktor Robert Are - DR JAZZ IN THE GROOVE
DR JAZZ IN THE GROOVE is a complex jazz album by composer and programmer The Always Right Reverend Doktor Robert Are and recorded by the Nine Unknown Men. Immediately, I was gripped by the fabric of compositional density and the maturity in the themes and arrangements. At moments it sounds like Mingus, others like Zappa. The songs have strong melodies and bold rhythmic decisions that lead to cascades of notes and whole moments that sound like extended runs. Elements of fusion permeate but this would probably be described compositionally as some sort of advanced style of "third-stream".
The bass programming may be amongst the most standout aspects of the record along with a timbre palette evocative of 80s or 90s era of the Residents sequenced to aggressively rapid yet humanistic instrumentation. There are elements you'd find in Stravinsky, Varèse, Noncarrow, and even television theme music.
The sheer amount of detail that went into each moment of each track of this record is very impressive. The harmonic direction of each song is dense to the point where at times it sounds like Romantic Era classical music but with unpredictable certainty (specifically the track A Past Outside of Time). Another element I greatly appreciate is the diversity in style from track to track, if not moment to moment. There are a lot of stop on the dime twists and turns on this album. Some of the songs even sound like they'd be perfect for action scenes in a David Lynch film.
All and all, this was a great, great listen. The Always Right Reverend Doktor Robert Are is a brilliant composer and this album is worth some re-listens.
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