There’s a lot to say about it, and I won’t say it. Today I am thinking about the role musicians play in bringing coherence to a community. Music, even vocal music, being an abstract form that people seem to need in order to make sense of their lives, their emotions. Yes, it is abstract but it is experienced so directly, through our bodies, our ears, our dancing feet. It pulls us into harmony with ourselves and with one another.

The status that Bill had was a result of his importance to a community of  free thinkers who were trying to move into something new and to create a new world. Bill and Judy’s music helped to knit the community together. And so here we are. Still standing.

The Palm Room--photo taken by a new world at flickr.

Thank You for Saying Thank You

This is a totally
accessible poem.
There is nothing
in this poem
that is in any
way difficult
to understand.
All the words
are simple &
to the point.
There are no new
concepts, no
theories, no
ideas to confuse
you. This poem
has no intellectual
pretensions. It is
purely emotional.
It fully expresses
the feelings of the
author: my feelings,
the person speaking
to you now.
It is all about
communication.
Heart to heart.
This poem appreciates
& values you as
a reader. It
celebrates the
triumph of the
human imagination
amidst pitfalls &
calamities. This poem
has 90 lines,
269 words, and
more syllables than
I have time to
count. Each line,
word, & syllable
have been chosen
to convey only the
intended meaning
& nothing more.
This poem abjures
obscurity & enigma.
There is nothing
hidden. A hundred
readers would each
read the poem
in an identical
manner & derive
the same message
from it. This
poem, like all
good poems, tells
a story in a direct
style that never
leaves the reader
guessing. While
at times expressing
bitterness, anger,
resentment, xenophobia,
& hints of racism, its
ultimate mood is
affirmative. It finds
joy even in
those spiteful moments
of life that
it shares with
you. This poem
represents the hope
for a poetry
that doesn’t turn
its back on
the audience, that
doesn’t think it’s
better than the reader,
that is committed
to poetry as a
popular form, like kite
flying and fly
fishing. This poem
belongs to no
school, has no
dogma. It follows
no fashion. It
says just what
it says. It’s
real.

–Charles Bernstein

There will be a memorial service for Bill Hinkley at the Nicollet Island pavilion in Minneapolis, Wednesday, July 7th, 2010, from 5:00 to 11:00 p.m.

Saint Anthony Falls, 1865

One of the difficulties the organizers of this event faced was finding a place big enough to hold all the people who loved Bill. The trade-off for having a lovely location with enough room is that it’ll be a catered affair, no potluck. However I have some friends on the Island, so maybe we can hang out on their front porches.

If you are in Duluth June 12th, you are invited to attend a reading of my latest endeavor, “Pine Creek,” with book and lyrics by Bart Sutter. I’ve written some original music and some arrangements.

It will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Quaker Meeting House at 1802 East First St, Duluth. As you can see from this-here map, it’s not far from Lake Superior. Admission is free.

I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Hinkley, William Bradbury, Age 67, of Minneapolis, died Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at the Minneapolis VA Hospital. Preceded in death by his parents Howard and Dorothy Hinkley, brother Seth Howard Hinkley, and sister Jane Lapchak. Survived by his wife, Judy Larson; daughter Rebecca Nyros; granddaughter, Briana Nyros; sisters, Carolyn (Arthur) Green and Cindy (Richard) Reinking; nieces and nephews, Beth Kling, Sally Star, Mary Elizabeth, Seth James (Sara) Jennifer (Milo) Miller, Christina Lapchak, Sarah Lapchak, Alicia Lapchak, and Phillip Lapchak; and numerous grandnieces and grandnephews.

Blessed with prodigious recall, Bill mastered Chinese and Japanese while serving in the Air Force from 1961-1965. After leaving the Air Force Bill turned his attention to music. Always seeking knowledge,he taught himself guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, jug and a number of other traditional instruments; ever the player and instructor, he spent the rest of his life teaching others to play. Countless students learned their craft from him, and, in doing so, found that a music lesson from Bill was, on a greater scale, a lesson in life.

Bill’s five-decade long career as a musician started with a gig at the Tokyo Grand Old Opry in the early 1960’s. After moving to Minneapolis in 1970 he joined the legendary Minneapolis group The Sorry Muthas and toured with them nationally. He became musical and life partner with Judy Larson in 1972. They helped inaugurate Garrison Keillor’s radio show, A Prairie Home Companion and were featured regularly thereafter. They also toured nationally for decades. After a long engagement they married in 1990. They remained partners in life and music.

Bill was loved and respected by all who knew him and he will be deeply missed by family, friends and the greater musical community. A celebration of Bill’s life will be announced. RIP Bill. Boat for sale.

Bill and Judy, photo by Ron Miles

I have happy memories of time with Bill and Judy playing music, chatting, eating, fooling around. I am grateful especially for the encouragement Bill gave me in making and performing music. Bill Hinkley was a generous, hospitable, funny, determined, gifted man whom I am honored to have known and loved.

Bill and Judy, 2009, from picasaweb.google.com/Kevin.Shashin/IFEL62Reunion

Bill is nearing the end of his long struggle with disease now. He’s worn out, in pain, and a color somewhere between green and yellow. He’s parked in the hospice wing of the Veteran’s Administration Hospital. He can still play and sing a little. And there is still a sparkle in his eyes.

There hasn’t been enough buzz about the International Marimba Festival now taking place. I chanced upon it through the SPCO’s contemporary music series, Engine 408, a beautiful, affordable series of concerts in the Hamm Building in downtown Saint Paul. The program I saw will be repeated Saturday, May 1st. Go hear something from this festival. You will be glad you did. I’m planning to see everything I can fit into my schedule.

Teruyuki Noda’s Mattinata for Marimba for marimba, three flutes and double bass with William Moersch soloing, was revelatory. Beautiful use of each instrument in its place, and grand expansion. I started to ask myself about sustained notes on the marimba, and how rolls correlate to strums on plectrum instruments. David Kechley’s Iberia answered my questions. The composition was well thought-out, and in particular the adagio was lovely and emotional. The marimba part was a good correlate for guitar, while doing harmonic action a guitar would be incapable of. The sax quartet was beautifully prepared, Gordon Stout played artistically and humbly, and the piece came off perfectly.

The other outstanding moment on the program was Alejandro Viñao’s Tumblers for Marimba, Violin and Computer. After computer glitches which caused the piece to be moved to the end of the evening, marimbist  Ji Hye Jung and violinist Nicholas DiEugenio appeared on stage and confessed that they would be performing “like real musicians” without a click track in their ears. They did. It was a heartfelt, funky performance which really opened my ears. From here on, I hope Ms. Ji will abandon the click track altogether.

I dig how  we are venturing into the 21st century with this instrument. Tonalities, timbres, voice combinations, rhythmic and melodic set-ups, expectations, relationship to audience, emotional caliber, virtuosity…none could have happened any time but now. The language of our times, on an instrument that was a novelty half a century ago.

Go hear for yourself.

Current projects:

I finished vocal music-directing a production of Cabaret at Century College, stage-directed by the estimable Randy Winkler, with orchestra conducted by Shirley Mier. This runs for one more weekend. The rehearsal process has given me more to chew on about performance. More on that later.

Bart Sutter’s verse play Pine Creek will be workshopped in Duluth in early June. I am slow writing music for this, but it’s coming along. I want to keep to a simple folk-music style for the show and it’s hard for me to walk on the correct side of the simple/stupid line. I have one more big song to write, and a number of arrangements to make. This play will premiere at Southwest State University in Marshall this coming fall.  This play is a reworking of his one-act piece, Small Town Triumphs which played at History Theatre back in the day, and was the occasion by which I encountered Bart and his brother Ross, a wonderful meeting which has yielded many collaborations.

I have a couple of instrumental commissions and a couple of vocal ones, including a reworking of Correspondences for a performance in late summer. I’ll be playing a benefit for Frank Theatre Company May 8th, and it thrills me to know that I’ll accompany Gary Briggle, one of the greatest singers in town. Now I am getting antsy, just writing about this, so I will get off the blog and onto the piano. More later.

When I started this project I had a general feeling about Baudelaire, and I liked the poetry.  Having read a lot more of him, thought about it hard and struggled to get it into song I have some more definite ideas. Today, with the project finished, I am pleased to have found an essay by Kenneth Rexroth that echoes my thoughts and gives me more to think about. It’s short, but packed full. I encourage you to read it.

The first thing I discovered was how utterly unsatisfying almost all the English translations were. I like what James Wright did with “The Voyage” and Roy Campbell hit the mark from time to time–neither Wright nor Campbell sounds like Baudelaire, but they produce vigorous and exciting poems. Most of the others leave too much to be desired. I agree with Rexroth: the poems are best in French.

In any case, after digging into a few, I realized that not only could no accurate translation be made but even if there were one, it’d make a lousy lyric. This is the case for most poetry: it’s too dense–too many words–and its logic defies musical setting. A poem carries its own music, and real music would get in the way.

So…forgive me Mr. Baudelaire. I pruned mercilessly. I abandoned your forms. I made whatever kind of lyric I thought would carry some of your meaning, and I made music to carry some more of it, and I made my own meaning out of your poems. I did what we do when we read them; I interpreted.

I feel an obligation to be faithful to something about the poems, to their ideas and images, and to Baudelaire’s mind. Baudelaire’s experiences, philosophies and attitudes were important to my understanding of the poems. I wanted to make the songs a journey with him through time; his day, his city.

Seven songs are not enough to give a listener all of Baudelaire. I picked poems about things I thought most important, and ones I thought would make good songs. If I add more later, I would like to set some poems to his mistresses, more Parisian poems, and maybe tackle the Litanies of Satan. Although Diamanda Galas kinda has lock on that one.

–Issa, translated by Robert Haas

photo of almond blossoms taken by Michael Favor, from wikicommons

The musical year here:

Twenty Days to Find a Wife enjoyed a successful run at History Theatre, and was named one of the top five dramas of 2009 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Fidgety Fairy Tales had productions throughout Minnesota and in Guam, and we took the cast to Washington D.C. to perform for the conference of the National Association of Families for Children’s Mental Health.

Beaverdance had a very good run at Bedlam Theatre over the holiday season. The cast was amazingly fearless and funny, and I now know I can write a musical in three weeks.

We revived and expanded In Dreams Begin Responsibilities for a showing at Nautilus Music Theater. It is now a piano trio piece with challenging choreography and we are talking about revisiting it in 2010.

I worked with a number of wonderful collaborators: Laurie Flanigan, Matt Jenson, Corrie Zoll, Dan Pinkerton and Nancy Nair; and many fabulous singers, actors, directors and dancers.

Today, the last day of the year, I finished writing the last song for a cycle on the poems of Charles Baudelaire which will be performed in January and February by tenor Brad Bradshaw.

I got my daughter off to college and she is happy there. I’ve been playing piano in churches and dance studios and parties and concerts.  Tonight it’s cold outside and it is warm in the house and there are candles burning. Happy New Year!