Gordi’s Ultimate Summer Mixed Tape
A couple of months back, I had a mildly surreal experience. One of my old roommates, whom I hadn’t seen in almost a decade or heard from in over five years, sent me a bunch of old mail that he’d had in storage ever since I’d moved away to Europe. Included in the package was a mixed tape that another name from the past had sent me back then, full of crazy jazz and 20th Century Classical music. Listening to the tape was a huge trip; it brought back really vivid memories of the person who sent it to me, his crazily unbalanced energy and his entirely original sense of humour. That led me to dig up another mixed tape, which led in turn to reveries of sitting on a fire escape watching the lightning with a girl that I was desperately infatuated with at the time, and it really struck me that the tape she’s made me all those years ago was almost like a snapshot of her soul. Listening to it brought the ‘her’ of those days back far more vividly than any photograph could have done.
When I put a mixed tape together for someone, I’m obviously trying to string together songs that I think that they will like. I’d assume, however, that if I’m putting the tape together properly what I’m really giving them is a little bit of myself.
So, here’s what I’d include if I was trying to capture who I am and what I am feeling as I get ready for the summer of 2005. Since symmetry has been something of a recurring theme in my life of late, I think I’d set it up so that the sides mirrored one another, like this:
Alfred Brendel:
Side A: Schubert, Impromptus, D899, no.4: Brendel has a reputation as something of a stern intellectual, as a thinking rather than a feeling musician. He might therefore seem to be a strange choice for a summer tape. The thing is, I first heard his performances of the Schubert Impromptus in the summer. I was staying at a friend’s house in Prague, and I woke up very early. Bored, I went to a small classical music store on the Malostrana side of Charles Bridge and picked up the CD. Walking across an uncrowded Karlovy Most to the Old Town Square while enjoying this most insightful and eloquent of performances ranks among the most magical musical experiences of my life.
The 4th Impromptu of the 1st set is my favourite, it has always sounded to me the way that looking at a waterfall feels.
Side B: Bach, Italian Concerto: Brendel’s justly famous Bach disc is another I picked up while bored in Prague. It was a couple of years later, the summer was dying, and I was trying to recreate the magic. That type of magic just happens, though, one can’t usually force it.
I put the disc away. A couple of months later as I was riding the tram I was astonished to find that my eyes were welling up with tears. The reason? I had Brendel’s performance of the Italian Concerto on my discman. I wasn’t particularly listening to it, I just had it on as background music, but it had somehow grabbed hold of something inside me and squeezed it until I was on the verge of tears.
On top of all that, this recording captures the sound of Brendel’s piano with almost perfect realism.
Duke Ellington:
The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crawfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie, and red beans ‘n rice, it means elegant pompano en papillote, funky filé z’herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po-boy with chow-chow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week – yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don’t eat day and night, if you don’t constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your bloodstream, then the mystery beast will keep on humping you, and you will feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left town. In fact, like any sex offender, it can leave permanent psychological scars.
— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Ellington’s New Orleans Suite is the musical equivalent of Robbins’ writing, it’s mad, erotic, mesmerizing, and vaguely psychedelic in the way it evokes a sense of place. Listening to this music while reading Jitterbug Perfume is the closest thing to being hungry, thirsty, lost, and horny in a strange and sweltering city and walking by chance into a cool and welcoming blues bar.
Side A: Blues for New Orleans: features Wild Bill Evans’ organ mixing with Johnny Hodges’ saxophone in nothing less than an evocation of Robbins’ humping beast. Further power is leant to the track by the sad, simple fact of it being the last thing Hodges recorded before his untimely death.
Side B: Portrait of Mahalia Jackson: showcases Norris Turney’s sensual flute, and the tune is as sad and beautiful as any of Tom Waits’ late night café waitresses and his songs about them.
Chopin:
Chopin and Tchaikovsky are great composers who are often underrated by music snobs because their music is so beautiful and powerful that you don’t have to be a snob to appreciate it. Seriously, if you are too fussy a connoisseur to appreciate Chopin, you need to lighten up. You’re missing out on one of the true pleasures of being alive.
Side A: Ivan Moravec: Scherzo no.2: Moravec is one of the great hidden treasures of classical music. He is certainly among the greatest living pianists, but he is so humble and so happy to live a quiet teacher’s life that he is virtually unknown outside of the Czech Republic. Scherzo is Italian for joke, and Chopin’s 2nd certainly lives up to it’s name, contracting gentle tinkling with huge eruptions of great power and tumultuous emotion. Moravec is more than up to the task of making musical sense of it all, and he turns Chopin’s most charming joke into a stunning demonstration of his own virtuosity.
Side B: Marta Argerich: “Raindrops” Prelude. Sviatoslav Richter: “Revolutions” Etude: Richter and Argerich are the most individualistic and powerful of pianists. If their performances can’t convince you that these compositions are, in fact, miniature masterpieces, then there is no hope for you. Each is a genuinely memorable experience unto itself.
Hummel
Chopin and Mozart wrote my favourite summer music, and the comparatively unknown Johann Nepomuk Hummel is perhaps best appreciated as a bridge between their respective worlds.
Side A: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Stephen Hough with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Bryden Thomson, Rondo: Allegro Moderato, and Coda: This particular recording did more to stir up interest in Hummel than anything else ever has. Hough is a pianist of astounding technical ability, and he brings this difficult and neglected work very much to life. When, at the coda, the Rondo finale is transformed into a dazzling display of musical fireworks, it’s like a rush of pure adrenaline.
Side B: Piano Trio No. 7, Rondo alla russa, Borodin Trio: Most critics seem to prefer the polite and genial versions of Hummel’s trios that were recorded by the wonder Beaux Arts Trio in the late 1990s, but I much prefer the more outgoing and temperamental Borodin version. The very Russian Borodins are at their very best in the final movement of the 7th Trio, a rondo “…in the Russian style.” Plus, I really dig the way that the dactylic rhythms of the refrain contrast with the fine counterpoint of the main episode. Oh, yeah!
Mozart:
And we conclude our backwards journey in time with a nod to the greatest musical genius of all time.
Whenever I’m listening to Mozart, I feel as though there is really no need to ever listen to any other music. I love every single Mozart composition that I’ve ever heard. It is very nearly necessary for me to include a little Mozart in every mixed tape that I make, but it is all but impossible to make a single choice. I’m looking at my stupidly huge Mozart collection right now, and I think I could just pick something blind and it would have to be great.
Here goes:
Side A: Clarinet Quintet, Tony Pay with members of the ASMF Chamber Ensemble: Oh, man, this is sooooo good… this is seriously… beautiful… it’s perfect… there’s no better music than this… oh… Lord, I love this so much.
Side B: Piano Concerto no. 21, Casadesus & Szell: No fooling, I sat and listened to the slow movement of this Concerto with my girlfriend while we watched the sunset once. I live on the West Coast, and the sunsets here are spectacular, but this music blew the sunset away.
Various Obscure Czech Jazzmen:
Side A: Jiri Stivin is virtually worshipped by jazz aficionados in his home country, and pretty much unknown outside of it. He makes his own flutes out of toilet pipes and such things, and plays them so beautifully that it beggars description. He travels around to local schools and plays recorder concerts to encourage kids to take up the instrument. He plays saxophone like a combination of Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman. He wears silly hats and makes goofy jokes and he has obviously devoted his life to spreading the love of music. He also always gets the best sidemen. If you are ever in Prague, I’d recommend you go out of your way to pick up a copy of Jiri Stivin Live at AghARTa. His performance of Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise will become part of your life forever.
Side B: Pomeranc are a completely unknown jazz ensemble, even within the Czech Republic. The group comprises my friends Tomas and Honza, and a constantly shifting array of their musical friends. It was my great pleasure to play with them regularly for almost two years. I have a very decently recorded copy of my final concert with the group, which was made three years ago at my goodbye party less than 48 hours before I left the Czech Republic. We had arguably the best rhythm section in Western Bohemia playing behind us, but unfortunately Honza was so drunk that he could barely stay upright in his chair, so it was hardly our finest hour. Still, it will be a cold day in Hell before I make a mixed tape without Kind of Blue, Blue Bossa, or Autumn Leaves on it.
Thanks for reading!
