December Update–gone for a while and back again–Kennedy Center Honors 2011-The insane Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer-the divine Stuart Duncan-John Williams

Well good people, back home from the wars. DC was ablaze last night with the annual shindig they call the Kennedy Center Honors, this year honoring Meryl Streep, Sonny Rollins, Neil Diamond, Barbara Cook, and Yo-Yo Ma. I have been musically directing the show for producers George and Michael Stevens since 2003 and it is quite an undertaking every year. This year was actually somewhat less stressful because the heavy lifting on the Sonny Rollins segment was done by my friend and Bassist/Composer/Arranger extraordinaire Christian McBride. Sonny is one of the great improvisors in history and that segment had to be all about improvisation and expression. My work on the Jazz segments of the past have been arranging and planning them with people like Bill Charlap (for the Dave Brubeck segment) and I helped with this a bit but Christian invited some of his illustrious friends like Joe Lovano, Ravi Coltrane, Jack DeJohnette, Roy Hargrove, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Billy Drummond, and Herbie Hancock. Amazing. For Neil Diamond, we had Jennifer Nettles from Sugarland sing her tail off reinventing “Hello Again” as an open tuned Acoustic almost Patti Griffin like heartbreaker. Lionel Richie turned “I Am, I Said” into a quiet storm Tuskegee meets SoCal thing as opposed to the Brooklyn meets LA Super Pop Ballad it originally was. Smokey Robinson came and funked out a bit with Sweet Caroline. I had a wonderful time with Smokey and am putting a few pics on the site from the bash.

The Meryl tribute was predictably star studded in every way with Anne Hathaway enchanting everyone with a version of the song Meryl sang to Jack Nicholson in Ironweed called “He’s My Pal”, turning it into “She’s My Pal” of course. Joining her were Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, and Mike Nichols and Robert DeNiro spoke about her. Great stuff. Every notable Broadway actress from Audra McDonald to Patti LuPone to Kelli O’Hara and Glenn Close sang in tribute of Barbara Cook and Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick spoke about one of their first dates being going to a Cook concert at the Cafe Carlyle.

For me the most intense part of the evening, the one I was most involved in even though I literally did not PLAY a single note was the segment for Yo Yo Ma. This was partially because the producer Michael Stevens and I had talked about it for months and the idea of the final arrangement haunted me for a number of reasons. Most exciting for me was that Michael wanted to honor Yo Yo not just as the greatest Cellist of our generation but as this Musical Bridge for so many people, this creator of the Silk Road Project, this man who has crossed so many boundaries, from playing with Ennio Morricone to Astor Piazzolla to Mark O’Connor and Alison Krauss. This man who has made music his playground. Chris Thile of the Punch Brothers, literally the Paganini of the Mandolin, easiest one of the greatest virtuosos alive on any instrument played along with Double Bassist Edgar Meyer, also one of our greatest composers and instrumentalists, a literal Giant who often composes single handedly these projects that bring together people like Bela Fleck and Alison Krauss and Yo Yo. They have a record out with Yo Yo Ma and Stuart Duncan who plays in my band at the Honors every year. The record is called The Goat Rodeo Sessions. Stuart is one of the country’s great treasures. He is a studio superstar, the leading fiddler for Nashville projects and the man who played so much of the fiddle music on “O Brother Where Are Thou.” The Goat Rodeo record is absolutely remarkable and it is the kind of record that I cannot recommend highly enough.

If you have any doubts let me at least say this, you can afford two dollars. Go spend $2 and download two songs. Attaboy and Here and Heaven. Just unbelievable. Anyway…….Edgar, Chris and Stuart played a version of Attaboy without Yo Yo for Yo Yo (* the honorees sit in a box in the first tier alongside the President and First Lady and they witness the performances. The performers perform in honor of these people.) Then the second group was also a group of people I had discussed with Michael, dear friends I have worked with before in the studio, in particular the great Cellist and Conductor Eric Jacobsen and Violist Nick Cords, both members of Yo Yo’s world famous Silk Road Ensemble. They are all virtuosos. Wu Tong was a musician from Beijing who plays a remarkable kind of Mouth Organ called a Sheng. It is best described as a kind of Asian Harmonica with Organ pipes. Incredible sound and Wu Tong is a master. He is also a gentle, kind and wonderful human being. Cristina Pato played the Gaita, a Chinese BagPipe which gets a remarkable sound and Cristina is an incredible presence. Look her up. She is a firebrand. Shane Shanahan played Percussion alongside Haruka Fujii. Brooklyn Rider is an upcoming String Quartet that has made a lot of noise of late, getting rave reviews for their iconoclastic concerts by the New York Times and they just recorded the Philip Glass Quartets plus Beethoven’s op. 131, the great Holy Grail of String Quartets. Colin and Eric Jacobsen lead the quartet. Colin is a great arranger and master Violinist and the quartet serves as the core group of the Silk Road Ensemble. With Jeffrey Beecher on Doubule Bass, they played a version of a piece called “Turceasca” which was extraordinary. Prior to all of this an all Star quartet of Chamber Musicians featuring Jamie Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Pamela Frank, Lynn Chang and the legendary Pianist Emanuel Ax played a section of the first movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet. The planned finale was supposed to be some representation of how Yo Yo COMBINES ALL OF THESE ELEMENTS TOGETHER!!! A musical melding of the worlds. First the Chamber Musicians playing something uniquely in the language of Chamber Music, then Stuart, Edgar and Chris playing in their American Bluegrass Virtuosic language and then the World Music of the Silk Road into something else.

I was asked to bring these musicians together in an arrangement that would lead to the entrance of James Taylor singing “Here Comes The Sun” because that was the song he did on Yo Yo’s recent Songs of Peace and Joy record. I am such a fan of all of these musicians, such a groupie in a sense, having bought and imbibed their work for so long that I was daunted by the whole thing. I am not falsely humble. When called upon to do an orchestration for Sting or Springsteen or a Horn chart or Choral chart or a large composition of some sort or musically direct this or that, even a star studded extravaganza, I am fine. I am programmed to do it. I have done it for years. BUT….writing something that is supposed to work and be authentic moving between different styles and then into a simple and beautiful version of a Classic Beatles composition without sounding pretentious all the while being played by some of my favorites musicians on the planet????????? Holy Mother of our Lord!! Add to this the fact that Michael Stevens wanted to see if John Williams would agree to conduct it. JOHN WILLIAMS!!!

John Williams is known to most people as the composer of some of the most popular movie music of all time, from Jaws to Star Wars to Close Encounters to Raiders Of The Lost Ark, E.T., etc etc etc. To me, that is underrating him. It is some of the more astonishing off the beaten path scores which contain some of his most remarkable music and some of his serious music. His piece TreeSong written for Violinist Gil Shaham and his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, written for Yo Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra are both masterpieces in my mind, just remarkable compositions, so beautifully rendered. His scores for Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can and his absolutely out of this world A.I., one of the finest scores of the past 20 years, are must haves, along with Saving Private Ryan, which is full of meditative Hymn like threnodies and Schindler’s List of course.

The pressure I put myself under writing this score, as simple as the eventual arrangement was, was crushing. My wife will tell everyone that I became a nightmare to live with. A very different experience from arranging the first charts for Sting. With Sting’s music I had prepared my whole life for it in a way. By the time I met Sting Soul Cages and Ghost In The Machine, Nothing Like The Sun and Synchronicity were fully internalized and I almost knew exactly what to do.

With this it was trickier. Thanks, indeed eternal thanks go out to Michael Stevens who approved a demo budget for me to go in and fully demo my arrangement and to Becky Young and Lisa Kim from the New York Philharmonic along with Joe Bonadio and John Patitucci who played on the Demo, all contracted by Sandra Park, and Alex Venguer who engineered it. I sent the demo to John Williams and James Taylor, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile, the Silk Road Ensemble and everyone else and they were all very happy. The performance went beautifully and to have John Williams so pleased and to have him agree to conduct it was a huge compliment and honor. He is a real hero in every way. To call him a generous and kind man is an understatement. He was a gem in the extreme.

That is my full report from the field in DC. The honors are on CBS Tuesday night the 27th of December. Be sure to watch. The Christmas Concert is coming up and I am deeply excited this year. Expect a full blog tomorrow about that.

Lots of love and Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and Happy Holidays and all that………… Rob

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