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stephcranford · 7 years

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[Carnival of Kindness] A Kindness of Ravens

[Original fiction, 4500 words. PM me for content notes if you need them.]

The worst part is, you know this is your own fault.

You’d known for years that you have to read the whole spell to make sure that there aren’t ingredients that aren’t mentioned in the list at the top, but you always made the same mistake, and sometimes it came back to bite you in the ass. This time, you didn’t notice that in order to summon a raven--or any corvid--you needed an actual raven feather.

But where on earth would you get a raven feather at 9pm on a Friday? You did a half-hearted Google search, and then an even more half-hearted (quarter-hearted?) search of the birding websites to see if there was a place where everyone knew that ravens flocked and, well, nah. And was it worth traipsing around in the dark, in a park, on a lark, with a spark--you shake your head--looking for a black feather and hoping that it was the right kind of black feather?

No, you decide, but you already knew it just wasn’t. There are places online where you can order raven feathers, obviously, and you might be able to go to the zoo or something, but it’s not going to happen tonight, if you need a raven feather.

Your hands start trembling at that, because you’d planned on summoning a raven tonight, under the full moon at midnight, just like the spell says. It’s been on your calendar and you gathered together everything in the list of ingredients. Most of the herbs are dried, and they’ll keep, but it was on your calendar and if you don’t do the spell tonight, you’ll have to delete it off your calendar, and when is the next time that a full moon will happen on a Friday night when you have three days in a row off, and what if the herbs don’t actually keep, because some of them were difficult to get, and…

A spiral, that’s what that was. You shut your eyes and blank your mind forcibly and repeatedly until you start to calm. Sort of. Not as calm as you’d like, but calm enough. You can’t solve the problem of not having a raven feather, which means it goes in a very particular mental box, one you’ve constructed to keep unsolvable problems, even though you know it’ll only hold for so long. You then go down the list: what next? What can you fix? What is something you can do?

You look at your calendar for another full moon on a Friday night. Four months from now, it’s on a Thursday, and you might be able to get a Friday off instead of a Monday, especially if you ask this far in advance. But the Monday after is your boss’s birthday, so probably not. But you can ask. You make a note for yourself to ask, and then you shut your calendar--it’s paper, but you also keep an identical digital version.

What else can you do? If you were cooking, you’d check for a substitute. Spells aren’t entirely unlike cooking, but you’ve never tried to substitute something yet, and what if it goes wrong? The spell is fairly simple, though, and if it goes wrong--what then? Probably you just won’t summon a raven.

You check Google for spell substitutions, but this isn’t the kind of information that would be found through a quick search. You aren’t surprised when you find nothing. You go over to your spellbooks, all three of them, and check the indices. Only two of the books even have indices, and you aren’t sure how accurate they are, but you look anyway. Nothing.

Frustrated, you flip through the third book, looking for a table of contents or some sort of organization. It’s not the book you’re using for this spell, and it’s not a book you use very often as the font is difficult for you to read, but it does have chapter headings. One of them jumps out at you: Basics. Maybe it’ll have something about substitutions in there.

And it does. Magic is largely a result of intent and symbolism, which is why a single hair can represent an entire person, and so on. In theory, the use of a picture or other representation of an item should do as well, although if one cares deeply about the specifics, this method is not recommended.

Do you care about the specifics? You care that it’s a raven and not another type of bird, but that’s why you specify the type of feather. You don’t care specifically which raven you call, since the spell has fuchsia flowers in it to ensure that whichever one is called will be willing. So in theory, a picture or other representation should work.

You have many pictures of ravens and their feathers saved to your computer, but when you try to print them, you discover your printer is out of ink. That can’t be right. You frown, but then you remember you ran out while printing those flyers for a coworker. That was right before you ran out of meds and nothing got done for a few days, and you obviously didn’t remember after that. Which, of course, you think grimly, is one reason you’re even doing this spell in the first place; a familiar can help with things like that. You try printing in color, to see if that cartridge has any dregs left in it, but it’s also empty. Your hands are starting to shake again. You know there are twenty-four-hour stores that carry your printer ink, but the idea of leaving the house to go to one--No.

You don’t have to leave, you reassure yourself. You don’t have to go anywhere. Besides, printing isn’t the only way to make a picture. You can draw one.

You don’t have any black colored pencils, but you have a bunch of Sharpies--or, well, you did, but your therapist made you leave them with her this last week so you could see if you could go a week without drawing on your arms. (There are faint pen marks on the inside of one wrist, but that’s been your only slip.) So you’re down to ballpoint pens, or . . .

You’re searching through the drawer of your desk, and you find something in there that isn’t actually a writing implement. After the initial rush of wrongness, you look at it and realize it’s pencil eyeliner. It’s not a brand you use, so probably your ex left it there the last time she was over. You pull off the cap and draw a line on the back of your hand. It hasn’t dried out, and it’s a good consistency to write with. It’s also got a particular sheen to it that reminds you very much of a bird’s feather.

Could you draw a raven feather with this? You may as well try; if not, all you’ve lost is a few minutes.

Using a photograph on your laptop as reference, you sketch out the basic shape with a pencil on a blank piece of paper and then start filling it in with the eyeliner. This is a raven’s feather. This is a raven’s feather. You know enough about spellcasting to state your intentions clearly in your mind.

The end result is pretty good, you think. You cut it out and set it with the rest of the items for the calling, and wait until midnight.

***

It works. Or, at least, the ingredients disappear the way they’re supposed to when a casting goes correctly, and you feel the “pop” in your ears that usually means that something happened. Nothing happens right away, though, and you sit down with a book to wait.

You want to stay up until something does happen, but you know that’s a bad idea; you’ll regret it for the next week or so and even more when you tell your therapist why. You took your night-time dose of the brain meds a few minutes after midnight, which is when you always take them, but now, a couple hours later, you also take the allergy pills and the sleep aid that you take at bedtime. You hesitate over adding the optional pain pill. Your joints ache, especially your left wrist and your right knee, but you can’t tell if it’s bad enough to keep you from sleeping. However, the pain pill plus the sleep aid would mean you’d be sleeping until about noon tomorrow, so you set the pain-pill bottle down. The sleep aid should keep you asleep regardless.

You fall asleep in your bed, the window coverings drawn, as they usually are. Your sleep is not untroubled, because the sleep aids always give you vivid dreams, but you never remember them when you wake up, just the vague, unsettled feeling that they give you. But there’s a reason you have a routine. You get up, pull on jeans and a t-shirt and some of your jewelry--two rings, one bracelet, one necklace--and then stop in the doorway.

Someone is knocking at your door.

That doesn’t happen, especially at nine in the morning on a Saturday. Should you answer the door?

While your brain is showing you the panoply of scenarios that might occur if you open the door, a thought shoots its way to the top: what if it’s the raven? You dismiss it immediately, because ravens don’t knock on doors, at least not like that, but you can’t entirely shake off the curiosity. You look in the mirror, and while your hair’s a mess and you definitely look like you just woke up, you’re presentable enough to answer the door. If it turns out to be a door-to-door salesperson, you tell yourself, you can just close the door and lock it.

It’s not a door-to-door salesperson. It’s a person with a long braid trailing over one shoulder and wide, bright-green eyes rimmed with artfully-applied eyeliner. You spend a moment appreciating the skill involved, how it turns up at the end in perfect flicks even though it clearly isn’t liquid eyeliner and is smudged perfectly evenly, until you realize that you probably should say something.

“Hi,” you say, your voice still a little scratchy and a lot lower than you wish it was.

“Hi,” the person at the door says. “I’m Raven.”

“Er, what?” you say, which isn’t what you want to say, but you couldn’t really stop yourself from asking.

“Raven. She and her pronouns,” she adds casually, and you’re happy for that.

“Casey, they/them,” you reply, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when someone introduces themself. You’re pretty sure you know why she added the pronouns; you’re nothing if not visibly queer, from undercut to rainbow flag pinned to the hip pocket of your black jeans to the stylized “NB” necklace you’re wearing. “Do we know each other?” It isn’t really what you want to ask, but you know that asking, What are you doing here? is generally rude.

“Not yet,” she says, “but you summoned me.”

“I did?” you say--and then it hits you. Raven. Her name is Raven. You didn’t summon a raven, you summoned a Raven. “I didn’t mean to?” you say.

“Oh,” she says with a couple of blinks.

“I was trying to summon a bird.”

“Oh,” she says again. She droops a little around the edges, but only for a second or so. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, then, especially this early on a weekend. Have a nice day!” She turns and takes one step down off your porch--

--but no further. You can see the muscles in her neck and shoulders, revealed by her hair being swept over her shoulder and her wide-necked tunic, clenching and twitching as if she’s trying to move farther, but she clearly can’t. Finally, after thirty seconds of strain, she turns back around. “It appears I can’t leave,” she says. Her voice is light, the naturally-high pitch made higher by her recent effort, but she keeps her tone even. You envy her control; you don’t even sound the way you want to most days.

But she’s said something, that she can’t leave, and you don’t know how to respond to that. You nod slowly, trying to buy yourself time to think, but this isn’t a situation you have a pattern for, and now you’re off script and you don’t know what to do.

Think, you say to yourself, your mental tone clearly berating, even though you know that your therapist is disappointed any time you engage in negative self-talk when you are in a new situation. If she can’t leave, where does she go?

In. She should come inside. “Would you like to come inside?” you ask, a temporary spike of happiness going through you at knowing what to do. However, it’s almost immediately countered by a spike of anxiety about letting someone, anyone new, into your house, and a second, not-unrelated spike of anxiety about the current state of your living room and kitchen and whether or not you have any food to offer or anything to drink or any clean glasses and whether or not she has any food allergies--or any allergies--that will be affected by your house and--

“I’d love to,” she says, and while the sound of her voice isn’t enough to stop the anxiety, it’s at least enough to cut off the spiral before it gets any worse.

The couch is, at least, mostly free of debris; there’s a blanket crumpled in one corner and the throw pillows aren’t in any sort of order, but that’s it. The end table has an untidy stack of books on it and the floor hasn’t been swept, nor the rug vacuumed, in who knows how long, but it’s not as bad as it could be. Raven doesn’t seem to notice the clutter and dust; she’s distracted by the painting over the fireplace, and then the photograph above the sofa, and then the mural in the dining room visible through the archway.

“Are you an artist?” she asks.

You shake your head no. “I work at a bookstore,” you say, and her gaze slides to the pile of books. It’s not why you have books around, but it’s as good an excuse as any. “My ex-girlfriend Elena was the artist. She did the mural on the wall.”

Was that too much information? You have no idea, but Raven doesn’t appear to be uncomfortable. “It’s gorgeous,” she says. “I love the colors.”

“I do, too,” you say. It’s why you have never considered painting it over, even when you were as mad at Elena as you could be.

She gestures to the couch. “May I sit?”

“Sure,” you say, trying to match her level of casualness. “Would you like something to drink?” You can wash a cup real fast, if you need to.

“Water would be great,” she says.

Water. You have water. You probably don’t have ice, since you don’t tend to put it in drinks due to it just being too cold for your mouth, but you can just not offer her ice. “I can do water.”

You don’t even have to wash a glass; the dishwasher is full and clean. You don’t have a filter pitcher or anything, but the tap water tastes okay here, and you fill the cup with the coldest water that will come out of the tap.

As you’re handing it to her, though, there’s another knock on the door. You’re confused. Should you answer it? Clearly, but you already have a guest, and who on earth could it be?

It’s a new person, short spiky hair, ripped black jeans, eyeliner smudges from yesterday beneath brown eyes. “Hi,” they say. “I’m Raven.”

Raven-the-first comes up behind you, making enough noise that you hear her, and chuckles. “How many Ravens did you summon?” she asks.

You answer her, even though your mind is whirling with a thousand questions. “Only the one,” you say. “At least, that’s what I thought.”

The new Raven eyes you and the first Raven and says, “Well, I’ll just go, then.” They try to leave, and of course it doesn’t work and you end up inviting the second Raven inside.

This Raven uses he and him pronouns, it turns out, and Raven the first is able to engage him in conversation while you go hide in the bathroom for a couple minutes.

Should you call your therapist about this? You have your phone in your hand and your therapist’s name on the screen, but you hesitate. She’s told you that you can call her at any time, and you’ve called her at weird enough times to know that she really means it, but you’d have to explain the situation and that might be worse than trying to power through on your own. If all else fails, your house is two stories, and you can go upstairs.

You count breaths for a few minutes and run your hands under warm water until they don’t feel so cold anymore, and then you go back into the living room.

There are now three people other than you in the living room. “Hi,” says the third one. “I’m Raven.”

You’re still boggling when there’s another knock at the door.

***

By noon, the stream of new people has halted, but there are twenty-five Ravens in your house. That’s about twenty more people than have ever been in your house at one time, and about ten or fifteen more than is actually comfortable for the people here. There are four sitting on the couch, two in the chair; all four chairs from the dining room set have been hauled into the living room, and that still leaves fifteen people sitting on the floor, the coffee table, and the dining room table itself.

You’re sitting on the stairway, which is close enough to the living room that you can pretend you’re being sociable, but there’s still a physical separation. Everyone is speaking, asking questions, wondering why they’re here, and you have no answers for them.

It’s a diverse group of individuals, ranging in age from eighteen or so to somewhat over sixty, as far as you can tell. The group skews about two-thirds female or femme and one-third masculine, but you’ve long since lost track of everyone’s pronouns. You know there are a few people here who aren’t really named Raven, as well; there are a couple people with last names like ‘Ravenel’ and ‘Ravenwood’ and one who is a young man in his early 20s who is a Baltimore Ravens fan, complete with jersey and the remnants of eye black on his face. Overall, though, you seem to have summoned a couple dozen Ravens.

You would laugh if you had it in you to do that.

The first Raven is going around the room, chatting with people; you didn’t ask her to do that and you aren’t sure what she’s saying, but you’re glad that someone is talking to everyone so you don’t have to. She comes over and sits next to you, an appropriate distance away, and says, “Can you tell me what you did to summon all of us?”

You think about trying to speak, but you’re pretty sure it won’t work, so you hold up a hand so she’ll wait. You go upstairs and get the book and bring it downstairs to show her. Her eyes light up, and she takes the book from you carefully. “Ritual magic,” she breathes, and reads through the entire spell. “And this is exactly what you did?”

You nod, and then shake your head. This you can’t explain just by handing her a book, but your throat is still tight, so you pick up your phone, open a text window, and type for a moment.

I didn’t have a raven feather so I substituted a picture of a raven feather.

“A picture? Like a photograph, or something you printed?”

I drew it. You take the phone back after showing her, and add, With eyeliner.

She chuckles. “Good idea. What brand?”

You tell her, and she laughs outright this time. “That’s the brand I’m wearing.”

“What brand?” one of the other Ravens asks, a slender person with long dark hair in a ponytail and a kilt. You can’t remember their pronouns and wish you’d thought to find nametags for everyone, but then again you hope everyone will leave before you need to know that.

“That’s the brand I use!” Raven-in-a-kilt says after being told.

The brand of eyeliner spreads through the room, and it turns out about eight of them use the same brand. It also turns out that all twenty-five of the Ravens are wearing eyeliner in some way, shape, or form. You’d laugh if it wasn’t disturbing your life right at this minute. You used an eyeliner feather to summon a raven, and instead you got twenty-five Ravens wearing eyeliner.

Of course, this doesn’t get you much closer to getting them out of your house. No one can leave, and you’re about to retreat upstairs when the first Raven asks you quietly, “Why did you summon a raven again?”

Ravens are familiars, you type.

“So you needed help?”

You shrug. It isn’t help you wanted, but someone to talk to while you were doing ritual magic. A little help remembering things, perhaps, but not an assistant. Maybe a partner? Putting it into words isn’t going well for you, so you just say, Something like that.

“But you can’t possibly need twenty-five peoples’ worth of help.”

You need zero peoples’ worth of help, so you shake your head no.

“Then . . . maybe tell the magic that?”

It doesn’t work that way, but you nod. The problem is, of course, you can only do ritual magic, and it doesn’t retain any sort of connection to you after the ritual is complete--that’s what the popping really is, the magic becoming independent of you. So you can’t speak to the magic. You’ll have to do a second ritual, although it’ll be one with less power since it can’t possibly be the right time of day and you can’t possibly have the right ingredients.

You go upstairs to the second bedroom, where you keep all your books and whatnot, and sit in the middle of the chalk circle. It’s not even worth looking up a real ritual in a book, but you get out a knife, dull-bladed but meticulously kept, and draw the circle and speak the words for unbinding. They’re not above a whisper, but you manage to force them out.

It doesn’t work. It doesn’t fail because you did anything wrong, but it fails because that’s not how you have to end the spell. You really have no idea why that’s true, but you know it’s true nonetheless. You have to figure out what the first ritual needed to let all the Ravens go.

You go back downstairs, and Raven the First apparently reads it off your face. “Didn’t work, huh?”

You shake your head no. “Needs something else,” you say, barely audible, and pull your phone out in case you need to speak anymore.

“What do you need?” she asks.

You shrug. Peace and quiet, you type.

“That I expected,” she says gently. “Anything else?”

“I, uh, could use a bathroom,” says the Raven in a kilt.

“It’s through the kitchen,” says the football Raven. “Sorry, buddy,” he says to you. “I had to go.”

You shrug--this whole thing is an invasion, but you’ll deal with it.

Kilt-Raven rushes off to the bathroom, and something in your ears pops. Was it that simple? You turn to First Raven, but she’s already nodding. “Does anyone else need anything?” she asks, raising her voice enough to be heard over the crowd noise.

Wise asses say the usual answers: a million dollars, a pony, a hot boyfriend. But one says, “I need a bass player,” and conversation stops.

“A bass player?”

“Yeah. My band’s holding auditions at two pm, and I have to get out of here before then.”

“Are you in the Paperwork Valkyries?” another Raven says. You think that one is the Ravenwood, and you’re a little jealous of their last name.

“Yeah,” says the original speaker.

“I was thinking about auditioning, but I got scared,” Ravenwood says.

“You should come anyway, if we can get out of here.”

Pop! “Oh,” says the Paperwork Valkyrie Raven. “I think we can leave.”

You think they can, too.

By twos and threes and even one memorable group of five, the Ravens find each other. Someone needs a roommate; the football Raven needs a date to his sister’s wedding. Ripped-jeans Raven needs a new car, and the Ravenel needs the five hundred dollars he can get from his old clunker.

The best part of this whole situation is that you don’t even have to do anything. You’re a catalyst; everything is moving faster because of the spell you did, but your part is done.

At the end, everyone’s gone except the first Raven, and she’s looking at you. “What do you need?” you ask her. Every time a person left your house you gained a little of your voice back, and you sound almost normal.

“I think,” she says, “I need you.”

She can’t possibly mean that, and you start to tell her, but she holds up a hand. “I think you need an apprentice, and I need a teacher.”

An apprentice? You’d never thought--but you aren’t--she can’t--

“Someone to talk to while you do rituals, right? Someone to share magic with. I can’t perch on the back of your couch, but I can be here, and you can teach me.”

The idea of teaching someone is terrifying and somehow appealing. You would be able to figure out what to say in advance, which always helps. She has already proven that she’s happy to accommodate you in ways that some of your friends--your actual friends from work and high school and even the people you know over the internet--forget or aren’t willing to do. It would be structure, and you like structure. Some people, and you’ve never really been able to determine if you’re one of those people, for a list of reasons, learn very well by teaching other people.

And, you realize, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to spend more time with her.

“Besides,” she says, and pulls a black feather out of her pocket. A raven feather. She had a raven feather in her pocket this whole time.

Of course she did.

You laugh, and she joins in. “I’ll consider it,” you say, and the spell pops in your ears one final time.

“I guess I’ll be going now,” she says and starts to stand. “Unless--?”

“Come back tomorrow?” you say. You definitely need some time alone now; you’re starting to itch, especially the insides of your wrists. “Maybe lunch?”

Raven smiles, her lipstick and eyeliner still as perfect as they were when you opened the door to see her hours ago. “Sure,” she says.

#carnival of kindness #paperwork valkyries is always the name of my band #original writing #story nurse #story hospital

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stephcranford · 8 years

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When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork. In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.

#disability #feminism #ableism

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stephcranford · 8 years

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Reblog to delete 2016

#yo

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stephcranford · 8 years

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(Listen) For more posts, follow Ultrafacts

#psh #i have a degree in music #i've heard worse

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stephcranford · 8 years

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Concert Review: An Evening with Tuba Virtuoso Øystein Baadsvik, in concert with David Werden and Minnesota Brass, Sunday Oct. 16, 2016, 7pm, King of Kings Lutheran Church, Woodbury, MN

Program:

Todd Tanji: Information Age (performed by the Minnesota Brass)

Øystein Baadsvik: Fnugg Blue (performed by Mr. Baadsvik with the Minnesota Brass)

Øystein Baadsvik: It Will Be All Right (performed by Mr. Baadsvik with Sarah Miller, piano)

Georg Philipp Telemann: Melodious Canon No. 2 (or 3), TWV 40 (performed by Mr. Baadsvik and David Werden, euphonium)

Roy Newsome: Bass in the Ballroom (performed by Mr. Baadsvik and the Minnesota Brass)

(intermission)

Michael B. Nelson: Waltz 4 Horn (performed by members of the Minnesota Brass)

David Shire: Marlowe’s Theme (performed by Mr. Baadsvik and the Minnesota Brass)

Irving Berlin: Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep) (performed by Mr. Werden and Ms. Miller)

Traditional/Thomas Moore, arr. David Werden: Your Enduring Young Charms (performed by Mr. Baadsvik and Mr. Werden with the Minnesota Brass)

Ennio Morricone: Gabriel’s Oboe (performed by Mr. Baadsvik and the Minnesota Brass)

And an unknown jazz encore (performed by the Minnesota Brass, with solos by Mr. Baadsvik and Mr. Werden)

Øystein Baadsvik’s official biography opens by stating that he is “the only tuba virtuoso to have carved out a career exclusively as a soloist, rather than becoming a member of an orchestra or accepting a teaching post.” While the upper Midwest has a surfeit of outstanding musicians--indeed, one of the audience members said of Mr. Baadsvik, “He’s the only guy I’ve ever heard who’s better than Jerry,” referring to Dr. Jerry Young, the professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire--this concert was indeed something special. Mr. Baadsvik has visited the Twin Cities several times in the last few years, generally performing at churches and with small ensembles, and any performance of his is an exciting, accessible experience that comes highly recommended.

The concert started with a jazz piece, Information Age, performed by the Minnesota Brass’s Minne-Brass ensemble, the concert version of a Twin Cities-based senior/all-ages drum and bugle corps. One of the soloists was a tuba player, and one can only wonder how he felt playing a solo on a concert that featured his instrument so prominently. The group is made up of the marching versions of typical brass band instruments, including trumpets, mellophones, baritones, and marching tubas, humorously called “pea-shooters” for their over-the-shoulder position.

While we’re discussing instruments, it should be noted that Mr. Baadsvik plays a Miraphone Eb tuba, called the Norwegian Star model, named for him. The particular instrument he was playing is a one-of-a-kind version of the Norwegian Star model intended for traveling; rather than a standard tuba which is in one piece, this one comes apart into four pieces to protect the parts that would most likely be damaged in travel. The bell comes off, in two pieces; the lead pipe, into which one sticks the mouthpiece, is also removable, and is made of rose brass instead of the silver of the rest of the instrument. If it affects the sound negatively, it’s impossible to tell from Mr. Baadsvik’s performance.

Typically tubas sit in the back of the ensemble, and it is unlikely that anyone who has seen Mr. Baadsvik perform in person could imagine him remaining behind an entire ensemble. He’s a very dynamic performer, bouncing, dancing, and swaying as he plays. Indeed, his entrance in the concert in question had him playing the opening to the Fnugg, his own composition, as he walked up the aisle in the church. The piece blends elements of rock, jazz, and classical music as well as a technique (singing while he plays) that approximates the sound of throat singing or a didgeridoo and then, towards the end, beatboxing into the tuba. The piece can only be heard to be believed, and his performance was one of the highlights of the program.

There were a few changes to the program as printed; apparently the expected pianist could not make it, which required a couple of adjustments. It Will Be All Right was supposed to be a composition by Anna Baadsvik, Mr. Baadsvik’s wife, entitled New Kid, but instead Mr. Baadsvik played another one of his own compositions. The melody came to him, he said, on the first day that sunshine returned to his native Norway after a long, dark winter. He was making himself lunch, and the rays of sunlight shone on his sandwich. This prosaically poetic image was reflected in the neo-Romantic simplicity of the melody, making effective use of the pentatonic scale and associated diatonic harmony. Mr. Baadsvik’s performance was lush and emotional and displayed his prodigious ranges--pitch, tone, dynamics, color, and emotion. Sarah Miller, from the MacPhail Center for Music, accompanied Mr. Baadsvik, and she would return to accompany Mr. Werden later.

Unfortunately, after such a piece, Telemann’s Melodious Canon in F Major (announced as a Sonata in F Major), played as a duet for tuba and euphonium, did not show to advantage. While the piece was performed solidly and with ample technique, it simply seemed out of place compared to the rest of the program. The piece listed on the program was to be Winter, from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and that would have fit much better, given the virtuosic range of the concerto.

The last piece before the intermission was Roy Newsome’s Bass in the Ballroom, a piece with particular emotional significance for Mr. Baadsvik as it was the first piece he performed as a tuba soloist. A two-part work, it starts with a tango and continues to a waltz in the Viennese style, and Mr. Baadsvik made it as showy as he could, even though it was clear it did not require either the technique or the emotionality of other works on the program.

After the intermission, the Minnesota Brass returned with a jazz Waltz 4 Horns by Michael B. Nelson. The piece was originally written for The Hornheads, a five-piece ensemble formed for Prince’s New Power Generation, and sounded a little different from the prototypical jazz waltz as the parts normally played by saxophones were instead taken by mellophones and baritones. This lent it a quality I’m loath to call “mellow,” given the wordplay, but the word nonetheless fits.

Mr. Baadsvik returned with Marlowe’s Theme, composed by David Shire for the movie “Farewell, My Lovely,” based on Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe novel of the same name. The piece, as Wikipedia notes, was also used as the theme to the Swedish jazz program “Smoke Rings,” and was originally composed for trombone and jazz band. The piece’s chord changes and overall feel are a little reminiscent of the music to a James Bond movie, and Mr. Baadsvik milked its melodrama for all that it was worth.

Mr. Werden returned for a solo number next, with Ms. Miller on piano, and they performed Irving Berlin’s “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep),” most famously sung by Bing Crosby in 1954’s White Christmas. He played the next piece, as well, his own arrangement of “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms” for two euphoniums, or euphonium and tuba in this case, a virtuosic theme and variations for two soloists with brass band. The tune, a traditional Irish air, “has also been used many times in Warner Brothers cartoon[s] as a sneaky calm set-up to a bomb blast,” as the program notes. (Those whose taste also runs to the less exalted might recognize it as the opening to “Come On Eileen,” by Dexxy’s Midnight Runners.) Listeners who enjoy the Carnival of Venice’s virtuosity will enjoy this arrangement as well, finding parallels between the two pieces.

The concert ended, nominally, with Mr. Baadsvik playing Gabriel’s Oboe by Morricone, a piece which sounds startlingly better on any instrument that isn’t the oboe. (I would like to note that my best friend is a professional oboist and is in agreement with me.) Mr. Baadsvik’s performance makes a strong argument for the tuba being the best instrument to perform it, and had the concert ended that way, all would have been satisfied. That having been said, this is the United States, and there was an encore, a jazz piece I could not immediately identify, and Mr. Baadsvik and Mr. Werden both contributed solos.

While I’m certain the Minnesota Brass is a fine ensemble on its own, it felt as if they rose to a new level in order to match Mr. Baadsvik’s peerless musicality. He makes the tuba seem a perfectly obvious choice for virtuosity, and his sheer genius levels of musicianship shine in every single note. If Øystein Baadsvik comes to your town and you miss an opportunity to see him perform, it’s a great loss, indeed.

#concert review #oystein baadsvik #oh no i committed another concert review #i promise i don't only review scandinavian music

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stephcranford · 8 years

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2015 Geek Partnership Society Writing Contest Imes Prize Winner

.... was me, and my story is now available to read.

Click here to read “Gesthemane”!

#writing: mine #it's almost like being a published author #self-promotion

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stephcranford · 9 years

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REVIEW: Minnesota Orchestra, Vänskä conducts Kullervo, Feb 4-6, 2016, Orchestra Hall

Program:

KORTEKANGAS: Migrations SIBELIUS: Kullervo Finlandia

[Content note: Rape, incest, suicide. I know: how often do you need that particular content note on a classical music concert review?]

I’d heard through the grapevine that the Minnesota Orchestra concert this weekend was going to be particularly spectacular, and so when I needed a last-minute birthday present for my husband, I jumped at the chance to buy tickets. (The Minnesota Orchestra has a $20-under-40 program: $20 tickets, up to 2, if you can prove you’re under 40 at the box office, and you get good but not amazing seats. Certainly better than the $29 ones I was going to buy.) I was especially interested because Finlandia is one of Ben’s favorite pieces--okay, it’s one of everyone’s favorite pieces, and even though it was one of three pieces on the program, and the shortest by far, I knew it was going to be worth the price of admission.

But first, a note about the Sibelius celebration and why it’s important: Jean Sibelius, Finland’s most prominent and greatest composer, was born a hundred and fifty years ago (and a bit). He was born when Finland was still part of Sweden and when Swedish was still the language of the upper class, so when he wrote classical music works featuring Finnish folk tales, the Finnish language, and aggressively Finnish nationalism, it was important and dangerous. His use of the themes and folk music of his native land places him among important company, such as Edvard Grieg (Peer Gynt), Bedřich Smetana (Ma Vlast [My Country]), and Antonín Dvořák (Slavonic Dances). The Minnesota Orchestra has a strong Finnish connection, via their conductor, Osmo Vänskä, and via the Finns who live in the state, and has chosen to make a season-long celebration of Sibelius’s life and works, including a display in the lobby featuring informational text, photographs, and video.

The first piece, Migrations, was written by a contemporary Finnish composer, Olli Kortekangas. It was conceived explicitly as a prelude of sorts to Kullervo, and as such uses a very similar orchestration: men’s chorus, a mezzo soprano soloist, and a large orchestra. The texts it uses were from a local poet, Sheila Packa, who is the granddaughter of Finnish immigrants on both sides of her family, and the poems are titled “Two Worlds,” “Resurrection,” “The Man Who Lived in a Tree,” and “The Music That We Breathe.” These poems, with three orchestral interludes separating them, combine imagery of trees, wind, water, birds, and music into a commentary on the immigrant experience.

Packa described her work as uplifting, and Kortekangas echoed that compositionally, using a lot of ascending whole-tone scales and the like and building to a triumphant ending, but there is also a lot of friction before we get there. Kortekangas showed a deft ability to make use of the chorus as a percussive instrument, repeating phrases such as “the ancestor’s face” to make use of the hissing sibilants. The middle interlude and “The Man Who Lived In a Tree” use jagged rhythms that overlapped, spread apart, and then came back together to invoke the image of choppy waves, fjords, or perhaps the branches of trees in the wind. The composer also made excellent use of the instrumental soloists; the horn solos and duets were particularly excellent, with their rich, silvery tone that could fill the whole room without being overpowering. The clarinet, violin, and cello solos all deserve recognition as well; the cellist, in particular, made it look (and sound) easy.

Lilli Paasikivi, dressed in a Ren-Faire-esque wrapped velvet-and-satin dress, did a quite lovely job; her voice is strong and warm, but the orchestration did not do her any favors. A very large orchestra, unless thinned carefully, is going to find it difficult not to cover up the lower range of a mezzo, especially when she jumps from a high note to a particularly low one. She shone more in Kullervo, where there weren’t quite so many jumps, and I think with some careful miking we may have enjoyed her performance a little better. (I will admit that I was in the seventh row from the front, on the opposite side from Ms. Passikivi, so perhaps I couldn’t hear the speakers, if they were being used, and perhaps she was a little louder if I’d been closer to the ‘sweet spot,’ but my point still stands. If the concert doesn’t sound good for the people seven rows from the front, either you need to fix your concert hall or you need to recalibrate your volume.)

The conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra is Finnish (Osmo Vänskä); the composer was Finnish, as was the soloist and the men’s chorus (the YL Male Voice Choir of Finland, conducted by Pasi Hyökki). However, the orchestra is American, as was the poet, and the songs were in English, which lent a slightly-accented multicultural feeling to the whole endeavor. And on the subject of the men’s chorus, they were wonderful, with powerful voices and, in the case of one gentleman standing in the first row, luxurious blond hair and a very expressive mustache. But I digress.

The first half of the concert was only about a half hour long, even after the multitude of bows and acknowledgments of the composer, who was there, as well as the poet and the conductor of the men’s choir. I wondered why they hadn’t put Finlandia on the first half to even it out, but all was explained later.

Kullervo is one of Sibelius’s earlier works; he was twenty-six when he composed it, and it showed, a little. There is nothing subtle about this work. Then again, the text is from the Finnish epic folk-tale-mythological poem the Kalevala, and it was a very depressing section. In brief, Kullervo, a youth with the bluest socks (this line is repeated quite often), meets a pretty girl, rapes her, and then finds out she’s his long-lost sister. The sister leaps to her death. Kullervo laments his actions and her death for a while and then goes and kills his uncle’s entire family before asking his sword (it was a gift from the gods) to kill him, and then falling on it. We’re told repeatedly that Kullervo is a complex, tragic figure, but to be honest, the text, or what of it that Sibelius chose to use, doesn’t show us that very well. All we really saw was that he was reckless, raped his sister, had poor judgment, and decided to kill himself at the end.

That is not to say that it isn’t a masterfully-composed work. There are five sections, three of which are instrumental-only (the first, second, and fourth); the other two have men’s chorus and two vocal roles, a mezzo, playing the nameless sister, and a baritone, playing Kullervo. (The baritone, Tommi Hakala, did not wear blue socks, in a missed opportunity. I do understand if he preferred not to identify with the character at all.) Both singers did wonderfully here, singing in their native language and in a more traditionally-composed piece not requiring large, asymmetrical leaps in range. But Kullervo is performed rarely, and I would have to say it’s not because of the men’s chorus requirement so much as that it’s just a rough ride.

The first movement is an introduction of sorts; the program notes told me it was in a traditional sonata form, but what stood out the most for me was how moody it was. Songs in minor keys and minor-related modes can be much less forbidding than this was, with repeated quarter- or eighth-note pulses in the bassline that spoke of terrible things to come. The second movement, Kullervo’s childhood, sounded as if it incorporated more folk tunes or folk-tune-like melodies, but even then, they sounded like the folk tunes that warn you of drowning in the well, rather than lovers reunited. The third movement started out with a melody in a major key, but under it the strings shimmered a tremolo that belied the happiness of the harmonies.

Fortunately there is no narration of the actual rape itself, but the orchestra made it clear what was happening even without the singers. Once Kullervo realizes she’s his sister, he starts singing woe is everything! (paraphrased) and there are large holes of silence (grand pauses) to emphasize the terribleness of what happened. (Of course the terrible part is that he dishonored his sister, specifically, but let’s ignore that for the moment.) The brass returns in large, dissonant chords to underscore the woe, and overall it’s a rather stressful experience, to be listening to it.

The fourth movement lets up with a slight breather; we’re back to a more military-style theme as he goes to battle, but by the end everything is frantic and terrible again, and the last movement has the chorus narrating Kullervo’s death with more dissonance and pauses and chromaticism. Overall, it’s very dark: thematically, tonally (that is, minor and modal keys), harmonically (dissonant brass chords), and orchestrally. Even the voices are dark: men’s choruses are traditionally held to be darker than mixed or women’s choruses, and the two soloists are the darker of the two voices for each standard gender type. Mezzo sopranos, as the joke goes, play “witches, bitches, and britches” (the last refers to trouser roles, in which they play boys), and while Kullervo’s sister is none of the above, she is certainly a tragic figure. At no point was she receptive to Kullervo’s advances, and the text makes that clear; it even makes vague reference to a rape in her past, if I’m reading it correctly. At one point, when Kullervo is lamenting his sister’s dishonor at his hands and her subsequent death, the English horn pipes in with a melody for the sister, and the English horn is, essentially, the darker version of the oboe. (With apologies to my best friend for simplifying the matter.)

As a note, I didn’t quite see much of a connection thematically between Migrations and Kullervo, despite the composer’s intention. The music didn’t seem to relate to each other much outside of the orchestration, including the choices of solo instruments (there was also some excellent horn work in Kullervo, as well as some great clarinet duets). The topics weren’t much the same, either, for which I was grateful: a hundred minutes as dark as Kullervo would have been very difficult to endure.

In short, after Kullervo, we needed Finlandia to feel like perhaps we could survive the rest of the evening. I have nothing else to say about Finlandia except that I burst into tears during it, as did a significant portion of the audience. If you want the full experience of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony but don’t have an hour-plus to dedicate to it, I recommend Finlandia.

Overall it was a roller-coaster of a concert, and surprisingly loud. If anyone ever tells you that classical music is too quiet for them, please refer them to the Minnesota Orchestra. My ears were ringing after Kullervo, and Finlandia wasn’t exactly quiet, either.

This concert won’t be repeated, as I went to the last night of it, but all three performances were recorded for probable release on the BIS record label at some point in the future, so you will be able to hear it someday. Just don’t skip the Finlandia at the end, and all will be well.

#music review #finlandia #minnesota orchestra #stephanie has feelings about things

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