The Humbugs and the Santa lovers–All God’s People need a little love under the Sun—writing while listening to Bon Iver’s Skinny Love–Great Song!!–MUSICIANS!!!—Ah–with fingers and air–not just rebooting and pushing buttons though that’s ok too.

Hello all,

I had two diametrically opposed experiences regarding the Christmas Concert today and I love when that happens though I wish the second had happened first and vice versa. First I ran into a guy in Starbucks who said this, “Rob, we’re coming Saturday night to the show. We would not miss it for the world. It is literally the holiday for us. I fought going to it initially with all that is within me. I told my girlfriend ‘Christmas Concert? Are you out of your mind? I would rather have all my bottom teeth removed.’ No thanks. I get enough Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer wherever I walk. I don’t want to hear any of these songs ever again. I don’t even like “Hark the Herald’ anymore. Little did I know it was like going to see Herbie Hancock play with Michael McDonald and Tower Of Power, with a little Joni Mitchell and Dylan thrown in for good measure. Horn arrangements, a choir to boot, a bit of Gospel, a lot of groove and just vibe for days. We bring friends every year.”

Right after I kissed him on the mouth ;-), I told him what I tell every person I meet in Starbucks who say they love the Christmas Concert: that I am convinced this will finally be the year that people decide “Enough. We’ve had it. Rob Mathes, you are a pain in our Xmas tail. No more William The Angel. No more Babies growing up. No more Ellington Dreidel Songs. DONE! We have had it with your fat face. Go away large man. Bah humbug you manger loving piece of poo!!”

What comforted me about that exchange though is that that is exactly what the concert is meant to do, to be an entirely MUSIC FILLED EVENT to stir the spirit like a combo Handel’s Messiah meets Dave Matthews at the corner of Ellington and Dylan Avenues.

Just as I got my ego boost, I drive down the road and run into an acquaintance who has had many conversations with me about the event and has always feigned a slight interest. I told him, “Hey man, this is probably the year to come if you’d like. There are great seats on Friday and good seats Saturday, decent on Sunday. You can call T.D. Ellis at the Music Source above Boston Chicken in Riverside (203-698-0444) or do www.artscenter.org  If you really have trouble getting a ticket, I’ll buy you one myself out of the house seats (I try to buy tickets for friends myself instead of giving them away because it’s a charity concert).”

This is a really musical guy. We talk about “Songs In The Key Of Life” and the Blues and Howlin’ Wolf and Gospel music. We are not close, basically only neighborhood friends of a sort, but he’s a wonderful guy and always a great character to run into. I could see in his vacant expression that not only was he not interested but the conversation was bugging him. I found a quick way out. I said, “Hey Curtis (names have been changed to protect the innocent), no worries, the concert is not for everybody.” He replied, “Sunday I am watching Football and Saturday I am hanging with friends. Have a great holiday.” Now, no one knows what anyone is going through in such a quick exchange of course. He could be someone going through something really intense or someone who literally is in the same place the guy above was regarding all things Santa!

As I left this exchange I thought, “Good for you Curtis. To hell with the self promoting Concert giver who thinks his little event is all important. Watch your football. It’s the weekend for goodness sake.” I also thought that the sadness I felt was somehow good for me. It isn’t all about me and my little concert. That I wasn’t going to be able to turn another person on to the beautiful music the great musicians I am privileged to play with make on that stage is no great bummer. I would love Curtis to check it out and become a convert like so many others but it’s ok. The fourteen hundred tickets or so we have sold thus far have been sold to people that keep us coming back every year and we are going to play our hearts out for those people. There are many tickets left though and we’d love some new converts. We will part the Red notes and kick out every jam on Anderson Hill Road that night I can guarantee that.

Onto other subjects….What is it about musicians??? Why are they such a beleaguered breed?? People don’t buy music in near the numbers they used to. No record stores. People buy from iTunes but adults on average don’t buy music like they used to and kids trade music and only buy singles. The Album is essentially dead. Musicians are under siege in big cities. There isn’t a lot for them to do. Will Lee was asked by a gifted musician recently, “Hey Will, what do I do to have the kind of career you had being a great studio musician playing on a lot of great recordings?” Will immediately without missing a beat said, “Sorry man. You’d need a time machine. These days a ton of music is made by turning on a computer.”

A lot of great music is made that way. I admit it. I love the bigness of those Gaga records and even remember singing Katy Perry’s Fireworks at the top of my lungs with my daughter while driving home from the city one night. All those records are made with software and not really with many musicians. But I digress.

If you go to my YouTube channel you will see a bunch of little films of me conducting orchestras at Abbey Road and at Clinton Studios (God rest her soul–Clinton was one of the last great New York Studios to close last year–the last day at Clinton was June 17, 2010). Every musician in those orchestras is a treasure. For instance, there is a moment in the film of me conducting the Intro of Why Should I Cry from Sting’s Symphonicities where the camera pans and you see the great Clarinetist Nicholas Bucknall with his Red scarf (it was FREEZING that day in London-Feb 2010) looking to his left. In the distant is Richard Watkins and Michael Thompson playing a Horn Line as the camera turns. JUST THOSE THREE NAMES bring up some great English music making history. So many extraordinary Film Soundtracks feature those great players. Richard Watkins is a Horn Legend in England and a lot of great composers have written Concertos for him. The cellist with the Grey hair to my right is Tony Pleeth, whose father was the very famous Cellist and teacher William Pleeth, Jacqueline DuPre’s teacher. Tony plays the Cello Solo in “Roxanne” on Sting’s Symphonicities and the Cello solo on a bunch of the Panic At The Disco stuff and some of the NeverShoutNever stuff plus tons of other things I have done. The wondrous Jackie Shave is leading the session on 1st Violin but in the second row of Violins to my left is Tom Bowes, one of the most extraordinary Violinists in England. On Viola is Peter Lale and Perry Montague-Mason is playing 2nd Violin. These are all contracted by Isobel Griffiths who is by now a legend in London. She has contracted everything from the Harry Potter films to Gladiator to Rufus Wainwright, Sting, Coldplay, XTC and Peter Gabriel records. She does everything for me. We all miss Gavyn Wright who was Concertmaster on these sessions for years. He retired in 2006.

At Clinton it’s Sandra Park’s orchestra featuring Lisa Kim as Concertmaster and Sharon Yamada along with Rebecca Young and Robert Rinehart on Viola and Alan Stepansky on Cello. They are playing a rather impossible chart for Next To You. My chief worry when taking on the Sting project was the intensity of the early music and I wanted to write one insane barn burner where I envisioned the strings playing at triple fortissimo at light speed while a percussionist beat on folding chairs, capitalizing in a Classical way on the Bang On A Car All Stars aesthetic which in the Classical world is the closest thing to what the Police were in the Pop world when they came upon the scene musically. David Cossin, the Percussionist from Bang On A Can is the Percussionist on that track along with Joe Bonadio. The Police were not as ferocious culturally as the Pistols or other true Punk and Wave outfits but musically incredibly muscular and deeper than all of them from a Harmonic and melodic perspective of course.

These are all heroes to me. Kids now make music by PUSHING BUTTONS!!  Go buy the Punch Brothers Antifogmatic record of the Edgar Meyer/Chris Thile record. Go buy the Goat Rodeo Sessions by Yo Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Buy The Black Keys record or the Black Dub record. MUSICIANS!!! PLAYING!!! What an inspiration.

Drummers Shawn Pelton. Joe Bonadio. Vinnie Colaiuta. Curt Bisquera. Charley Drayton. Kenny Aronoff.

Bassists Will Lee. Zev Katz. Pino Palladino. Jon Evans. Jeff Allen. Tom Barney. Anthony Jackson. Ira Coleman. John Patitucci.

Guitarists Billy Masters. Shane Fontayne. Marc Shulman. Dominic Miller, Tim Pierce. Jeff Mironov. Nicky Moroch.

Percussionists Bashiri Johnson. Mino Cinelu. Joe Bonadio. Rhani Krija. Shane Shanahan. David Cossin.

Keyboardists Michael Bearden. Philippe Saisse. David Sancious. Henry Hey. Chris Coogan. Rick Knutsen.

Horn Players Jeff Kievit. Tony Kadleck. Don Harris. Jim Hines. Jeremy Pelt. Andy Snitzer. David Mann. Aaron Heick. Lou Marini. Brad Lehli. Tom Timko. Tim Ries. Roger Rosenberg. Clark Gayton, Mike Davis. George Flynn, Jim Pugh. Keith O’Quinn, Jeff Nelson, did I mention Jeff Kievit?

Thanks also to Jill Dell’Abate for coordinating all these musicians for me for many, many years and for also contracting regular string sessions for me and beautifully with no drama, I might add, featuring the great Violinist from the MET named Elena Barrere.

These are just a few of the musicians I get to play with on a regular basis. I will add to the list as I remember more. This is just off the top of my head. I haven’t mentioned singers or people I play with every once in a while or String players, just people I play with a good bit of the time or at least recently. The people above are people to emulate musically/artistically. Remarkable musicians, all of whom contain within them secrets to a different universe and ways of looking at the world artistically we could all learn from. That is what musical expression does. Every musician who uses his soul and fingers and air through a horn plays differently every time he/she picks up his or her instrument. That is the message of my Christmas Concert other than Love coming to town born in a stable and Judah Maccabee winning back the temple. The great amazing heavenly gift of music. The great proof for me of something beyond us all. Beethoven, Stravinsky, Corigliano, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Sting, Sprinsteen, yes Bon Iver’s “Stacks” (that’s the song I am on now), The Beatles ’65, Vivaldi’s Violin Concertos (all of them–yep–all 760–more like 150 actually), Mahler’s 9th, Duke’s Blanton and Harrell band, Wynton Marsalis’s new Vitoria Suite record, Branford’s new duet record with Joey Calderazzo, Radiohead’s Supercollider.

Anything Keith Jarrett has done ever….. Human beings playing music…….MUSIC. Thank the Lord for music. There. I said it. I hope the agnostics out there will forgive me that one.

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