the end of time at the beginning of the year

Happy New Year! 2008 has begun with projects that remind me of how lucky I am to be a musician.

Today is the official release date of my piano duo album "Reimagine." (Read my reflections on the album here.)

Last week I gave my first public performance of Messiaen's Quatour pour la fin du temps with my esteemed Academy colleagues. I couldn't have asked for a better way to commence my year than with this rapturous, mystical 50-minute masterwork that eludes all description.

As I worked on the piece, I was fixated on the Angel's words [which Messiaen had included in the score], "Il n'y aura plus de Temps"—it became my mantra. I loved delving into the darkest nightmarish depths, striving toward the most beatific heights, and tapping into the terrible joy of the music. I loved blending my sound with the strings and clarinets to create an unyielding, massive, granite-like sonority in the inexorably formidable six movement. I loved sitting without playing for 15 minutes in breathless awe during the solo clarinet movement and the "Intermède" for the other three instruments, and then finally ending my respite with the rich E major chord that begins the accompaniment to the cello's reverent, seemingly infinite "Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus." (This movement to me is love incarnate.) This music transcends the bounds of time and space, and what a revelation it was to explore Messiaen's devotional vision of the Eternal.

To quote Victor Hugo: "Soyez à l'infinie."

cruel beauty

I just alighted upon this quotation of Benjamin Britten, and I love it:

"It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and of freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony."

Music may torture us, but the "suffering" it inflicts is the best kind—one that compels us to confront our fears and desires, to delve deeply into and stretch beyond ourselves, to face the infinite.

This peerless, all-encompassing force of music is something I try to tap into every time I perform, but I don't always succeed. However, I felt especially connected during my recent performance at Ravinia. In spite of a cold and a severe lack of preparation—due to my crazy schedule and inconvenient practicing situation (i.e. no piano in my apartment), not a lack of responsibility!—everything somehow locked into place and I found myself equipped with this ineluctable ability to shape things just as I wished. It is the greatest joy to lose yourself in the music and the moment (to loosely quote Eminem) while opening your heart to the people around you. Alone on that stage and embraced by attentive listeners, I felt empowered and free, and although a performance doesn't last temporally, its echoes endure.

To return to the aforementioned quotation, I am finding a forlorn and urgent beauty in Radiohead's latest effort, In Rainbows. Standout tracks to me include "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi," "All I Need," and "House of Cards." Another piece of music I'm obsessed with at the moment: Messiaen's "Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus" from the Quatour pour la fin du temps. This is beauty at its most ecstatic.

sempre con anima

It's a relief to be an artist because the nature of the profession allows one to emote in a way that's intensely personal and yet blessedly private at the same time—this is surely one of the reasons that I'm so drawn to the abstract nature of music. Though language is arguably less abstract, writing often serves a similar function; one can dance around words while unleashing messages of great intimacy.

To quote Italo Calvino: "Writing always means hiding something in such a way that it is then discovered."

The Center

"The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt." -Bono

Word.

Tabula Rasa

I seem to have a penchant for E. M. Forster when it comes to blog titles: my piano duo's blog pays homage to Where Angels Fear to Tread and the appellation of this new blog refers to one of my favorite (and oft-quoted) literary passages of all time:

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

Ah, Howards End . . . how I love this book!

"The prose and the passion" also pertains to the polarities of life and to the nature of being a musician.

Forster aside, the real point of this entry is to celebrate my foray into the vast and bewildering blogging universe. Private person that I am, I'm rather surprised at myself for entering such a public forum, but I do enjoy writing as a satisfying outlet for the many thoughts passing through my mind. This blog will most likely feature reflections on performances and travels, all sorts of nonsense, and hopefully occasional glimmers of insight!

Until next time, peace.
EJR