Road Movies

Last Tuesday the violinist Midori visited SFGC! She played a little unaccompanied Bach for some of the older girls, and talked to them briefly about the Thornton School of Music at USC, where she is now an instructor.  To see and hear a few minutes from this visit, check out http://www.youtube.com/user/sfgirlschorus#p/a/u/0/mQGo1lbY97U.

This past Saturday evening I attended her recital at the Herbst Theatre, where she performed an entire program of works written during the last two decades. I think one of the tests of great music is its timelessness, regardless of when it was actually written.  If it sounds like a fad, it probably will be one, and not terribly relevant to listeners in 20 or 200 years.

Though Midori’s concert could never be called easy listening, nor would it qualify as entertainment, it was pure or absolute music, and simply magnificent.  In addition to the brilliant Penderecki Violin Sonata No. 2, my favorite piece that evening was also the only vaguely programmatic work, John Adams’s Road Movies, which Midori and Adams both describe as “travel music.” 

I love the idea of music for travel, in theory and in practice.  What’s a road trip without  tunes?  More than the desert island question, I like to ponder what the sound track would be, on any given day, if life were a movie.  During morning walks along the El Cerrito BART path, my inner stegosaurus often plays a daily soundtrack, just inside my brain, rather than via ipod or whatever. (It’s a quiet, but heavily trafficked path, so I like to keep my actual ears open.) It’s also a kind of memory game – do I really remember all the notes in that piece, or the words to that song?

Anyway, it’s one version of road music (aka life music).  I hope that no matter what else we do, we teach young women to find, hear and love true music from any age, so that it  resonates within them throughout their lives. Whether we’ve been on a Long Strange Trip or the Road to Nowhere, music definitely makes the journey more interesting, and for some of us, the music of the road may be even more important than the destination.   

“True music. . . must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the
time.”  George Gershwin