UNCOVERED

From Spirit To Studio

An entire season and a major new album both reach a climax this week for Orchestra Nashville. Last night was the long-planned Music of the Spirit concert at Belmont Heights Baptist Church. Today begins two days of recording at Oceanway Studio with John Jorgenson and (tomorrow) the Turtle Island Quartet, who were part of last night’s excellent and wildly diverse show.

It was a picture perfect night on Belmont Boulevard...

What is Spiritual Music?

That question has as many answers as there are types of music and spiritual beliefs. Yet that is the quandary we are embracing on this blog.

We’d like to know what music you feel is spiritual and why. Send us your recommendation of a work of spiritual music, and tell us why you choose it. Music Director Paul Gambill will then choose the program to the Music of the Spirit concert from the suggestions we receive.

Paul has already programmed one work for the concert—Anima Mundi, by Orchestra Nashville's former composer-in-residence J. Mark Scearce. You can listen to exceprts, read the text Mark chose for Anima Mundi and his program notes here.

Now it’s your turn to weigh in. Let’s see what Nashville thinks is spiritual music and Orchestra Nashville will bring those ideas together in a program that is sure to be a tour de force of Music Without Boundaries.

To start the discussion, we’ve brought together a panel that has offered some provocative ideas on this question. They’ll be weighing in throughout this process to respond to your comments. And we’ll keep a running list of works that are suggested and the program selections that Paul chooses for the concert on June 17th. Click on the panelists' name below to jump to their comment on What Is Spiritual Music?

You can add your comment by clicking "Comments" below and scrolling down to the Comment box. This is also where you'll be able to read others' comments. If your recommended work of spiritual music is chosen by Paul for the concert, we'll send you four complimentary tickets to the concert.

Beth Nielsen Chapman is a singer-songwriter. She recently completed a double CD called Prism in which she sings in nine different languages from all different paths of faith.

Sankaran Mahadevan is Professor of Civil Engineering at Vanderbilt University and an Indian vocalist in the Carnatic (South Indian) classical music tradition. He organizes Indian classical music concerts frequently at the Sri Ganesha Temple in Nashville. 

Jonathan Neufeld is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and a classical music critic for The Tennessean. He is currently working on two books in philosophy and music: Critical Performances, and Listeners, Critics, and Judges: Performance and Deliberation in the Musical Public Sphere.

Michael Alec Rose is Associate Professor of Composition at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music. His concerto for klezmer and chamber orchestra, titled Arguing With God, was commissioned and premiered by Orchestra Nashville in March, 2007.

J. Mark Scearce is a composer and Director of the Music Department at North Carolina State. He was composer-in-residence with Orchestra Nashville from 2002-05, and is the composer of Anima Mundi, the first work chosen for the Music of the Spirit concert.

Odessa Settles is a member of the Princely Players, which offers evocative programs on the enslavement and liberation of African-Americans and has performed their unique program of spirituals, work songs, hymns, and songs of freedom throughout the country.

Rabbi Rami Shapiro is Adjunct Professor of Religion at Middle Tennessee State University, and part of the interfaith faculty of Scarritt-Bennett Center. His most recent book is The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness (Skylight Paths).

New Stuff from Friday's Balfa Toujours show!

Friday night's Acoustic Cafe season finale at Grace Chapel harkened to the Louisiana bayou and the Appalachian mountains with the remarkable cajun band Balfa Toujours collaborating with Darrell Scott and the Orchestra Nashville string quintet. The Balfa family name is storied in Louisiana music circles, and the band includes Christine Balfa on guitar, Dirk Powell on accordion, and amazingly talented Courtney Granger on fiddle and most of the lead vocals. Powell and Scott have worked together before, and Powell was a force in old-time country music before distinguishing himself in Cajun music, so when he and Darrell opened the show doing a bluesy duet of Darrell's "Family Tree" with Powell on accordion, it made total sense. Balfa Toujours held the stage for the first half, offering Cajun two-steps and waltzes, which stirred some of the audience to come up front to dance. It is dance hall music after all.

In the second half of the show the full ensemble offered up some more complex works, brought in by Balfa and Scott, and richly orchestrated by Don Hart. The long song Annabelle was an extraordinary epic about slavery and a secret romance. It was a true collaboration between Powell and Scott, and Dirk tells the story in a new piece on Orchestra Nashville's Uncovered project. Also marvelous was Powell's "Waterbound," a tune that had to be re-scored on the day of the concert when an irregularity in the timing of the piece was discovered in rehearsal. Music director Paul Gambill narrates how, um, exciting it was to get that together. Don Hart amazed everyone by working in a major change on concert day, and we have rehearsal audio coming soon of the final rehearsal just before concert time.

This show marks Darrell Scott's final concert as co-artistic director of Acoustic Cafe. It's been a remarkable journey and it's really quite amazing how many new works or radical interpretation of old songs he's pulled off over these two years of concerts. Good thing there's a Best of the Season CD coming so that those magical performances won't be lost in time.

Sankaran Mahadevan on Spiritual Music

I am a vocalist and composer of Carnatic music, the classical music tradition of South India. There are two systems of Indian classical music, the Northern (known as Hindustani), and the Southern (known as Carnatic). The two systems have common origins and musical ideas, but also very distinct styles that differentiate them as two separate systems.

In the Indian (predominantly Hindu) tradition, the ultimate purpose of any art is spiritual experience, the feeling of oneness with the One spirit that unites us all, beyond the illusion of matter that divides us into the many. Indian art theory calls this experience as “rasa” (literal meaning: essence). A successful artistic expression, whether music, dance, poetry, painting, sculpture or literature, carries both the performer and the spectator from outer physical expression through the world of emotion to the ultimate quietude that is the domain of the divine spirit, beyond space and time. This ultimate meditative experience is synonymous with Yoga, the union of the individual with the universal.

At one level, Indian classical art tries to achieve this goal in an explicit way, through religious and spiritual themes. Thus most expressions of classical art are also religious, drawing extensively (and in many cases exclusively) from the rich and vast Hindu religious literature, stories about gods and goddesses, emphasizing the many facets of prayer to the divine. Thus at one level, the musician’s purpose is to feel and express his/her connection to the divine and help the audience feel that connection as well, through soulful singing of the lyrics that have explicit religious content, similar to gospel singing. However, there are also several other levels at which Indian classical music tries to create the spiritual experience.

The dominant musical form in Indian classical music is the raga (pronounced raa-ga), which in its elemental form is just a scale, a defined set of ascending and descending notes. There are an infinite number of ragas, based on various possible scales and shades of musical notes. In a musical performance, the raga is performed through several vehicles – elaboration through abstract syllables, songs, solfeggio singing etc. All these vehicles demand tremendous improvisation, and it is in this improvisational performance that we find a very unique conception of spiritual music in India. Each raga, which is a sound form, is treated as a divine form in Indian music, and the musician is like a priest, invoking the presence of the divine through the raga, with the audience also participating in this worship. In singing the various phrases of the raga, the musician is, as it were, chanting the glories of the divine, very similar to a Hindu worship ritual, but with no lyrics, just abstract syllables. The glories of the divine are infinite, and the raga is also infinite; the improvisations are only limited by the ability and imagination of the musician. My teacher always says, “Each raga is like an ocean; thousands and thousands of musicians over the centuries have not exhausted even one raga. Each musician goes to the ocean and collects the amount of water that is determined by the size of the pot he carries.” Therefore, we have an interesting expression to say that we learned something. We don’t say that we learnt a raga or a song. Rather, we say that the raga or the song “came to us”. Thus the musical forms are treated as sacred, and any accomplishment by the musician is only the blessing of the musical form.  The word “raga” literally means attachment; thus the extent of spiritual experience is determined by how well the musician and the audience bind themselves to the divine form of the raga. A similar description can be given for the very complex rhythmic patterns employed in Indian classical music, known as tala (pronounced taa-la). It is common to see audiences of Indian classical music closely following the rhythmic improvisations and going into raptures.

Thus an Indian classical  music peformance is spiritual at many levels, whether as a religious poetry,

gospel singing, or the invoking of the devine through the melodic forms of raga, or the rhythmic forms of tala.

Hearts and heartache

The irony wasn't lost on Orchestra Nashville's guest artists or audience last night at Grace Chapel in Lieper's Fork. Three of the finest songwriter/artists in Music City, Matraca Berg, Gretchen Peters and Suzy Bogguss, made for an amazing first half at our annual Valentine's Day show. The mood was festive, but the songs were not all about happy hearts. "This is the un-Valentine song" joked Peters as she introduced "You Don't Even Know Who I Am," her astonishingly powerful two-sided song of love gone cold that was made into a 1995 hit single by Patty Loveless. Suzy sang her own hit "Outbound Plane" where love almost flies, and "Aces" where it seems to be crash landing. Matraca offered a dose of young love with her smash hit "Strawberry Wine" (made famous by Deanna Carter) and had one of the night's show stoppers in a brand new song reflecting on the tragedy of post-Katrina New Orleans called "Muddy Water."

But fear not if you're thinking about catching tonight's repeat performance and you're in the mood for love songs. Raul Malo, the star of the second half, was all about romance, offering one delicious bon bon after another. He sang the Everly Brothers' classic "Let It Be Me," the kiss-filled "Besame Mucho" and a boiling Latin duet with Suzy on "Two To Tango."

Where you there? Please let us know what you thought.

New Content Alert: Silverman's Journey

One of the more unusual and innovative pieces on the program at last November's Thanksgiving Celebration concert was the Overture for strings by electric violinist Tracy Silverman. We've just posted two pieces of video that trace the journey of that piece from first rehearsal to the stage. It wasn't easy. Paul Gambill reports that after two rehearsals, he and Silverman discussed the possibility of dropping the piece, but Paul has seen how Orchestra Nashville comes together when the pressure's on, and the dropping idea was quickly dropped. In the rehearsal video, Silverman talks about the challenges of the piece and about what if felt like to hear it gel. The other video is the complete performance of the six minute work. This content is only available to Uncovered subscribers, so join up if you haven't. The season highlights CD is going to be awesome.

John Jorgenson on NPR!

Our friend and ArtistShare/Uncovered partner John Jorgenson was the subject of an in-depth interview yesterday afternoon on NPR's All Things Considered. He talks with host Melissa Block about the challenges and allure of the gypsy jazz style and about his latest CD Ultraspontane. Check it out HERE. While the audio piece doesn't specifically reference Orchestra Nashville and Uncovered, the web article does. We very much hope you'll sign on to experience the rest of the making of John's new album. One of the major pieces from that project is Istiqbal Gathering, and we've posted a new FREE video documentary about the recording session for this incredible piece of music.

A New Year, A New Name!

From a press release that went out this week...

For many, there is no better time than the New Year for a transformation. The Nashville Chamber Orchestra is doing just that with the adoption of a new name, Orchestra Nashville, and a new aesthetic to creatively represent the progressive organization. Their mission to engage and inspire audiences and musicians with the innovative presentation of traditional classical repertory and new music that celebrates Nashville’s eclectic music community remains unchanged.

The move to “Orchestra Nashville” marks the second name change in the organization’s history...

New Jorgenson Content

We took a bit of a breather during the holidays, but we're back with fresh content from John, including part four of his bio interview, in which he talks about his years with the Hellecasters, his instrumental guitar super-group, and for the guitar enthusiast, two video tours of John's greatest guitars, the ones he's used on record and on stage. Coming soon, extended video of John's most recent recording session on his ArtistShare album in the works now.

Jorgenson recording photos up

We've just uploaded a new slide show from pictures takenby our pal Harry Butler last Monday when John Jorgenson and the NCO recorded his original piece Istiqbal Gathering. It was a remarkable day, with the full NCO squeezed into Oceanway Studio on Music Row. The group rehearsed and set microphones for three hours then spent three more hours laying down performances in high resolution digital audio. The NCO is planning on releasing the piece in the coming weeks for download as a sort of "single." Keep watching this space. It will blow your mind.