The Friday Morning Listen

First posted on Mark Is Cranky:

Man, it's been a good week! So many thoughts swirling around in the 'ole head about music: What is it? What do people think of it? How do people think of it? It's enough to make a person want to quit his day job and write about this stuff full time (right, like I need any more encouragement).

So in a bit a musical synchronicity, I just happen to have been making my way through Bobby Previte's ode to Joan Miró, The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró. Bobby Previte (drummer/composer extraordinaire) walked into the Museum of Modern Art one day and was smacked upside the head by a Miró retrospective. In particular, Miró's Constellations.

Created during the tumultuous years of 1940 and 1941, Miró's process was begun in the small town of Varengeville, France and then moved (a survival tactic, avoiding the Nazi approach) to the island of Majorca (Miró was a native of Spain). These paintings were, as stated in this recording's liner notes, Miró's "...life raft, and on them he floated away from the misery and evil of war and the increasingly brutal social order."

Previte's compositions, one for each painting, are his 'emotional translations' of the artist's work. The music contains both written and improvised elements and is played by a large ensemble of varying textures. Some of the instrumental 'weaves' make my brain waves crest: the descending marimba figure in "Awakening In The Early Morning" is a perfect counterpoint the the flute and the rising trumpets to follow. Great stuff. I have stated in the past that I tend to "see" music in pictures, so it's been interesting to sit and take in Miró's work while listening to music that reflects somebody else's emotional response.

Shortly before this suite was recorded, Previte's producer pointed him to an article by composer Georges Antheil. This is a fantastic summation of Miró's work and, some seventy-one years later, might be applied to this music as well:

The classic world of music, in vogue up until today, with its exact limits and placings, and its taste always within a certain classic geometry is a music made up of wood and plaster colored with the imitation colors of a faded Athens. This exactness and lack of play does not permit the music to dream. The lesson that Miró has taught us is not be afraid of music, or its bite, even if the line doubles back upon us, and perhaps in certain cases annihilates us. Here we have a rubber music, dreaming unashamedly, delicately breathing, inflating and deflating, like a being sleeping or the suns cooling. Let us examine the objects in the sky, abolish the constellations, and consider the light years between each and every planet. I love Miró's music and I hope that he might like my attempts at drawing lines such as his own, or at least to forgive the plagiarism.

Previte's response? "Amen to that, brother."

Article Author: Mark Saleski

Mark Saleski is a writer and music obsessive based out of the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. He has contributed to Jazz.com and also writes reviews for Blogcritics.org. He produces the weekly feature The Friday Morning Listen. …

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