Reviews

Arvo Pärt: Musica Selecta (ECM New Series 2454/55)

| Tyran Grillo

2454|55 X

Arvo Pärt
Musica Selecta
A Sequence by Manfred Eicher

Recorded 1983-2011
Mastered May 2015 from the original recordings by Peter Laenger and Manfred Eicher
Produced by Manfred Eicher
U.S. release date: 11 September 2015

Here is a commemoration not only of the professional and personal collaboration of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and German record producer Manfred Eicher, but also of the creative spirits that guide them both toward shared spatial goals. Beyond that, it is a looking glass of sonic history in which is reflected two souls who’ve welcomed countless listeners on a journey of light. Issued in time for Pärt’s 80th birthday, Musica Selecta divides that light into its spectral gradations, sounding every band in a sequence of hand-selected pieces from his ECM New Series tenure thus far.

In his liner note for the two-disc album, Eicher refers to Pärt’s compositions as “solitary sound-sculptures.” An apt description if ever there was one. Solitary, because they come from the relationship of one man to the divine, but also sculpted because they take in countless aspects of creation into their corporea. What emerges from Eicher’s idiosyncratic sequencing of events here is therefore less the portrait of an artist than a horoscope, as planetary alignments contradict, refract, and inspire one another into a harmony of greater spheres.

Pärt and Eicher

Remarkable about the program is not only the way in which it compresses a 30-year history into two hours, but also the gentle reminders and forgotten facets—if not new discoveries—of the composer’s oeuvre it contains. Of the latter, the Hilliard Ensemble’s previously unreleased performance of Most Holy Mother of God is an astonishing example and proof that, more than meaning, it is the very architecture of words which determines their sacredness. Like a modest, timeworn church, these melodic structures stand before us marked by the passage of time. Astonishing, too, are those textures more familiar to us, such as the chant-like Ode VI from the Kanon pokajanen, one of Pärt’s profoundest medi(t)ations of flesh and sacrament. Architectural awareness is again central to understanding the integrity of this music, miring itself as it does in the rafters and other neglected places where godly light is most needed. It also introduces into the album’s narrative flow the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, whose voices, under the direction of Tõnu Kaljuste, have occupied the central axis of Pärt’s ECM zodiac from almost the beginning. Their harmonies uncover, like a skilled woodcarver’s tools, moments of transcendence as wounding as they are luminescent. Pärt recognizes the scar in every beauty.

This is what we really mean by the phrase “reading between the lines.” Not the extraction of the visible from the invisible, but the knowledge that everything is inherently invisible, except by the illumination of regard. And so, if either of these pieces feels like dreaming, it is only because singing can sometimes be more surreal than anything taking place behind closed eyes. Solitary voices fluctuate like reflections on water, because neither can exist without the other. We might do well to understand Pärt’s compositions in likeminded fashion—that is, to recognize that no simple motif would have grown without the ancestors before it. All the more appropriate, then, that this conspectus should begin with Es sang vor langen Jahren (“From long ago thus singing”) from Arbos. An album that seems to have fallen off the critical radar, but one that is nevertheless a Musica Selecta of its own. It showcases his ability to negotiate a range of atmospheres—from the intimacy of chamber settings (such as this one for alto, violin, and viola) to the inward-looking sweep of his Stabat Mater, which at 24 minutes is the vastest work included here. Its dramas are theatrical in the same way the heart is theatrical.

This collection’s remaining choral pieces are more entangled with non-living, yet somehow sentient, instruments. The Alleluia-Tropus and Beatus Petronius from Adam’s Lament represent organic conversations—one playful, the other somber—between voices and strings. The latter’s addition of winds renders stems for every leaf. Between them is Trisagion (from Litany), performed here by the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra as if it were so fragile that even playing it might break it. In this universe, the value of silence, such as it is, feels especially alive. Wallfahrtslied / Pilgrims’ Song (Orient & Occident) is scored for men’s choir and string orchestra and moves more celestially in a combinatory realm of mysticism and gravity. It is an expression of the itinerancy of faith and the challenges it faces when crossing borders. Sometimes, however, the borders cross us, as in the two selections from In Principio. Mein Weg, scored for 14 strings and percussion, builds a descending framework to move upward, while antiphonal Da Pacem Domine is a righteous summation, a tipping point into the as-yet-unknown future of his flourishing.

Silouans Song brings us to one of Pärt’s most pivotal and defining releases: Te Deum, which in addition to the stirring title work (not featured here) yields the mighty Magnificat. These works—Silhouans Song for strings and the Magnificat for choir—feel their way along their respective paths, finding that the truest epiphany comes not from moments of grace (however one chooses to frame them) but in their aftermath, during which one trembles from the shock of revelation while putting together the pieces of a shattered soul. As strings cry out, so do voices draw their bows, each the inner to the other’s outer.

In the company of such vocal apparatuses, the mechanism of the piano, in all its earthy resonance, comes to us as if out of time. In his rendering of Für Alina (Alina), Alexander Malter removes enough of his touch that the windows of access he finds in the score glow with a light born of need to see itself seen.

In highlighting the spaces in which Eicher and Pärt have forged their friendship, one necessarily emphasizes the care with which they have chosen musicians to transport listeners outside themselves. And who better than pianist Keith Jarrett and violinist Gidon Kremer to play a duo version of Fratres. It is the most significant work of this collection, being the world’s introduction to Pärt via the seminal Tabula rasa. The album was the first of ECM’s New Series imprint, which since 1984 has sailed a discriminating vessel at the fore of contemporary music. Jarrett and Kremer bring a level of sensitivity rarely heard in subsequent versions of this often-recorded piece, a spirit of newness and adventure that can only have come from their unprecedented reckoning with what was then a relatively obscure voice leaping like the violin from behind the iron curtain of Soviet oppression. The Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten is another quintessential selection from Tabula rasa, a vibrant threnody that throbs with passion and memory.

From what is arguably Pärt’s finest release, Miserere, comes Festina Lente. Scored for orchestra and harp, it pairs beautifully with the Cantus, if only for its gradual development and lilting form. It also bears dedication, this time to Eicher himself. The tripartite Lamentate, from the album of the same name, is also included. Pianist Alexei Lubimov and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, at the baton of Andrey Boreyko, strike a most appropriate balance of lucidity and distortion in this fragile tone poem.

Musica Selecta does more than tell a story. It pulls the beginning and ending of that story together to form a circle, which stands before us like a portal, replacing the suffocation of expectations with an eminently breathable oxygen. Pärt, as only he can, spins our comprehension of it all from elements unseen yet—praise creation—audible. So audible, in fact, that this music might just hear more of us than we ever will of it.

 

Live Report: Made in Chicago at Cornell

| Tyran Grillo

Made in Chicago

Made in Chicago
Live at Bailey Hall, Cornell University
October 4, 2015
8:00pm

In 2013, a year after being named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, drummer Jack DeJohnette was asked to perform at the Chicago Jazz Festival. Given a free choice of bandmates, he convened reedmen Henry Threadgill and Roscoe Mitchell, pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and bassist Larry Gray on far more than a whim. Their connection runs back to the early 1960s, when DeJohnette was making a name in his hometown of Chicago. Abrams and company would go on to found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, or AACM, from whose ranks would arise the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago. By that time, DeJohnette’s career was already taking off in New York City. Still, he never forgot those formative spaces, where Chicago cats would play together for hours on end in the city’s legendary “loft” concerts, performed in musicians’ homes. As frequent host Mitchell recalls elsewhere, “Every time I get together with musicians from the AACM it’s like we are just picking up from wherever we left off.” And so, despite having never recorded before as a quintet, an organic unity abounded when the historicity of the 2013 gathering was captured as Made in Chicago, released this past January on the influential ECM Records label.

If the album can be said to be a feather in the cap of DeJohnette’s already vast output, then by now that same cap could surely unfurl wings and soar of its own accord. His discography reads like a Who’s Who of modern jazz, ranging from untouchables like Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman to the brightest stars, among them bassist Esperanza Spalding and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, of the here and now. Although his integrated style is recognizable across a spectrum of genres and cross-cultural collaborations, his open-door policy with ECM has yielded some of the finest projects of his career. Whether in the Gateway Trio with bassist Dave Holland and guitarist John Abercrombie or the pet project known as Special Edition (which included pioneers Baikida Carroll, Chico Freeman, and Rufus Reid), to say little of the enduring Standards Trio with bassist Gary Peacock and pianist Keith Jarrett, DeJohnette has consistently brought an exhale of soul to every inhale of heart that imbues whatever musical organism he touches. All this and more was in clear evidence on Sunday night as Made in Chicago kicked off this year’s Cornell Concert Series on the Bailey Hall stage.

Before a single gesture of the band went live, I had the rare privilege of interviewing Mr. DeJohnette in an open Q&A session the previous afternoon. I asked him about his association with AACM musicians and how it shaped his musical identity. “Back then, we were cultivating an original approach to improvisation,” he told me in his thoughtful yet humble manner. “AACM’s motto was to establish the serious intentions of everyone that came out of its ranks. Jazz wasn’t simply improvisation, but a continuation of improvisation, creation through a process by which everyone and everything in the multiverse is hardwired to do. That concept fuels me and this combination of players that I got together. To play spontaneously is a challenge. You are exposed. The ability to compose on the spot, to create motifs and rhythms and communicate those not only to the other musicians but to the audience … It’s more like soundscapes, painting in sound.”

I asked DeJohnette whether he felt that hanging out with the AACM crowd allowed him to explore spontaneity in ways he hadn’t before. “Definitely,” he agreed. “Chicago prepared me for New York. It was my school. You practiced at home, but you played and developed your consistency to create and improvise fluidly on the instrument by performing. I don’t like the term ‘free jazz,’ because it’s not really free. The real freedom is in the choices we make. That’s why I always prefer to think of it as spontaneous composition.”

Indeed, we do well to remember that DeJohnette is a composer at heart, crafting — whether off the cuff or with more forethought — melodic and intervallic structures with the ease of a lifelong painter at the canvas. The analogy is not ill-chosen, for it is one that DeJohnette shares in reference to his own craft. “I’m not just a drummer,” he said of the capacity in which fans are more likely to understand him. “I’m a colorist who paints and participates in the music both harmonically and rhythmically.” He likewise cites the piano as a central component of his sonic upbringing. It was his primary instrument and one to which the drums were a later addition.  “I used to spend three to four hours a day on each instrument, because I wanted to bring the drums up to the level of my piano playing. The piano helped how I heard the ensemble, tuned the drums and how I approached the cymbals. If you listen to cymbals closely, they have a gong-like resonance, a higher frequency. Both piano and drums, of course, belong to the percussion family, so for me the two instruments have always overlapped one another.” This idea of overlapping is immortal in DeJohnette’s musical worldview, by which the growth of his art comes across with that much deeper inherency.

Where in the latter vein DeJohnette brought the wisdom of history, Abrams brought the wisdom of process when, following the Q&A, he led a master class for the Cornell University Jazz Band. Since co-founding the AACM, Abrams has had a formidable career of his own not only as a musician but also as a bona fide composer, his String Quartet No. 2, for one, having been premiered in 1985 by the Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall. It was from beneath the shadow of this hat that Abrams addressed the young musicians with poignant, if dense, nuggets of advice. “I’m interested in what you don’t know about yourselves,” he told them. “Allow your imagination to go inside.” Simple words on paper, to be sure, but difficult to embody in practice. In his sagacious, patient manner, Abrams worked through moments of confusion and revelation with equal attention, encouraging students to “give it presence” here or “create however you want to play it” there whenever hesitations manifested themselves. All of this was meant to bring across a central point: Evolving jazz artists feed not on the carrion of others, hunt not for things that have been found. Rather, they dig within and give us something we can carry on into the future.

Nowhere was this so aptly demonstrated as in the performance proper, in which the straight line paved by DeJohnette and Abrams yielded a downright ritualistic pentagon when Made in Chicago gave presence to 90 minutes of uninterrupted experience. No titles were given to the concert’s four long tunes, and perhaps any announcement thereof would have imposed on their continuity. The first piece, which felt more through-composed than improvised, opened where most jazz performances wouldn’t: with a cello solo. Gray’s bow was mellifluous yet robust, trailing a mournful shadow by its gait. Like so much of what followed, it catalyzed a play of frequencies, at once ancient and of the moment. One by one, the rest of the band followed suit. As Mitchell’s full-throated alto, DeJohnette’s selective contacts, Abrams’s starlit keys, and Threadgill’s incanting flute took shape, one could almost feel the molecules transforming in the room. It was, I would wager, a challenging introduction to those who were expecting to tap their feet to something recognizable. But as Abrams surely would have reminded us, it was all about sharing a search for the unknown.

How lucid this philosophy blossomed as the pianist himself introduced the second tune, rippling into Mitchell, whose alto proved a force to be reckoned with. His penchant for circular breathing and complex finger work led to some of the concert’s most arresting developments, contrasting beautifully with Threadgill’s halting pointillism. It was as if both were navigating a rift between dimensions, only one was trying to escape while the other was content to remain where he was. Gray and DeJohnette meanwhile played not so much off as through each other, shifting their densities to allow for Abrams’s extensions. Like a player piano gone haywire, his keys seemed to move of their own accord. From there the band whittled its way down to DeJohnette alone, crisply defining every hue with painterly intelligence, as he did also in the next tune, which found him exploring the possibilities of a full-contact drum synthesizer in a veritable rain forest of utterances, and in the final piece, recognizable as Mitchell’s “Chant” from the quintet’s recent album. Here Mitchell dominated on the shriller sopranino saxophone, keeping step with Abrams’s mounting speed. If anywhere, here was the potential of simplicity to the fullest, a difference through sameness that blew the candle flame of inspiration enough to keep it wildly dancing but unextinguished.

For its encore, the quintet proceeded whimsically, Mitchell (switching between three saxophones) and Threadgill (on alto) playing with expectations over the solid groove laid down by DeJohnette, who demonstrated himself, like the band as a whole, for all a peaceful commander. As the musicians turned on their last dime, strangely evoking a feeling of travel by way of suspension, I couldn’t help but be reminded of what DeJohnette had said the day before: “I just follow where jazz wants me to go, and where jazz wants to go depends on what humanity does with the challenges we face as a species. We have to adapt to our environment, and I think that music and art speak to that. I don’t know if you’re going to have any more John Coltranes and Miles Davises, but there will always be people addressing the times we live in through their music. The actual event of getting together and playing music together is vital. The people who come to listen are instruments, too.” Which is not to say that we as an audience were being played, but invited to join our notes of appreciation to theirs of generation.

Among the handful of albums in the DeJohnette catalog to which I find myself returning with especial frequency is his 1997 ECM effort Oneness. In addition to its moving progressions, this understated leader date boasts one of his most emblematic titles. Oneness is no mere throwaway concept, but a core tenet of this essentially ad hoc collective. It is an overarching expression for what DeJohnette and his peers can do, a testament to their quasi-spiritual quest for unity. As Abrams mentioned in his master class, musicians don’t need to be anywhere else than where they want to be, and neither did the fortunate listeners, as we sought purchase in the increasing density of their comet’s tail. They followed wherever the sounds wanted them to go and, despite the distant past implied in their advancing years, had nothing but the future in their hands.

(See this article as it originally appeared in The Cornell Daily Sun here.)

JAPO complete

| Tyran Grillo

I have now reviewed every release in the JAPO catalogue. Shout outs to Craig LeHoullier, Steve Lake, and Bernd Webler for helping make my JAPO listening complete!

Any of you regular readers out there might have noticed that I recently reviewed the two latest XtraWATT albums. These stand as my backward entry into ECM’s other sub-labels. I do, of course, plan to also explore WATT and CARMO in full on this site, although such reviews may be sporadic, mixed in as they will be with the most up-to-date ECMs, along with albums from farther afield.

Below is a list of all JAPO releases, hyperlinked to my reviews for your convenience.

JAPO 60001 Mal Waldron The Call (Feb 1971)
JAPO 60002 Abdullah Ibrahim African Piano (Oct 1969)
JAPO 60003 Barre Phillips For All It Is (Mar 1971)
JAPO 60004 Herbert Joos The Philosophy of the Fluegelhorn (Jul 1973)
JAPO 60005 Dollar Brand Ancient Africa (Jun 1972)
JAPO 60006 Bobby Naughton Understanding (Oct 1971)
JAPO 60007 Edward Vesala Nan Madol (Apr 1974)
JAPO 60008 Jiří Stivín & Rudolf Dašek System Tandem (May 1974)
JAPO 60009 Children At Play s/t (1973)
JAPO 60010 Enrico Rava “Quotation Marks” (Dec 1973, Apr 1974)
JAPO 60011 Magog s/t (Nov 1974)
JAPO 60012 OM Kirikuki (Oct 1975)
JAPO 60013 Manfred Schoof Quintet Scales (Aug 1976)
JAPO 60014 Larry Karush/Glen Moore May 24, 1976 (May 1976)
JAPO 60015 Herbert Joos Daybreak (Oct 1976)
JAPO 60016 OM Rautionaha (Dec 1976)
JAPO 60017 Stephan Micus Implosions (Mar 1977)
JAPO 60018 Ken Hyder’s Talisker Land Of Stone (Apr 1977)
JAPO 60019 Manfred Schoof Quintet Light Lines (Dec 1977)
JAPO 60020 Rena Rama Landscapes (Jun 1977)
JAPO 60021 Globe Unity Orchestra Improvisations (Sep 1977)
JAPO 60022 OM OM with Dom Um Romao (Aug 1977)
JAPO 60023 Lennart Åberg Partial Solar Eclipse (Sep 1977)
JAPO 60024 Contact Trio New Marks (Jan 1978)
JAPO 60025 George Gruntz Percussion Profiles (Sep 1977)
JAPO 60026 Stephan Micus Till The End Of Time (Jun 1978)
JAPO 60027 Globe Unity Compositions (Jan 1979)
JAPO 60028 Barry Guy Endgame (Apr 1979)
JAPO 60029 TOK Paradox (Jun 1979)
JAPO 60030 Manfred Schoof Quintet Horizons (Nov 1979)
JAPO 60031 AMM III It Had Been an Ordinary Enough Day… (Dec 1979)
JAPO 60032 OM Cerberus (Jan 1980)
JAPO 60033 Elton Dean Quintet Boundaries (Feb 1980)
JAPO 60034 Peter Warren Solidarity
JAPO 60035 Tom van der Geld/Children At Play Out Patients (Jul 1980)
JAPO 60036 Contact Trio Musik (Oct 1980)
JAPO 60037 Es herrscht Uhu im Land s/t (Dec 1980)
JAPO 60038 Stephan Micus Wings Over Water (Jan 1981)
JAPO 60039 The Globe Unity Orchestra Intergalactic Blow (Jun 1982)
JAPO 60040 Stephan Micus Listen to the Rain (Jun 1980, Jul 1983)
JAPO 60041 Stephan Micus East Of The Night (Jan 1985)

Live Report: Avi Rothbard Trio at Smalls Jazz Club

| Tyran Grillo

Avi Rothbard Trio
with Jay Leonhart (bass/vocals) and Tomoko Ohno Farnham (piano)
Smalls Jazz Club
22 June 2015
7:30pm

Israeli-born guitarist and composer Avi Rothbard has earned his stripes in the relentless music scene of New York, where he has lived since 1999 and where his talents have found their way into a range of projects. With such a full palette already on his own, only those musicians with the right sensibility will do for bandmates, and a trio performance with bassist Jay Leonhart and pianist Tomoko Ohno Farnham at Smalls in June of 2015 was just what the doctor ordered in this regard.

Over the course of two richly varied sets, Rothbard and friends managed to balance their idiosyncratic strong points within a smooth group unity. Each musician brought a distinct signature to the stage without ever clashing for dominance. Farnham’s compacted, cellular approach to soloing, for instance, tapped the flavors of old-timey jazz to everything she touched. Whether comping beneath Rothbard’s leading tone in Randy Weston’s “High Fly” or bringing nostalgia and joy to the music of Wes Montgomery and Kenny Baron, she maintained a free, conversational tone. She further showed her inventiveness in Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphy Dance,” for which, in tandem with Rothbard’s sensitive touch, she spun fresh colors from the older threads.

Rothbard, for his part, stretched each tune until it fit like a favorite shirt. As composer, he spearheaded some of the most impressive turns of the night. Three originals—“Eye Talk,” “Twin Song,” and “Minor Impact”—acted as vibrant springboards for the band’s communicative potential, each more appealing than the next. With moods ranging from lyrical to blinding, they had an overall ductile quality that adapted itself to the themes at hand. As technician, Rothbard bared his chops on the theme from I Love Lucy, an unexpected highlight made all the more brilliant for its arrangement and virtuosic energies.

Overall, the drum-less roster allowed the band members to revel in open improvisational spaces. Leonhart was particularly on point in this regard, his playing so percussive that the sticks and skins were hardly missed. A fixture in the New York jazz club scene, Leonhart sang not only through his instrument but also along with it, offering two originals of his own—a self-deprecating blues called “Joy” (another fine vehicle for Farnham) and a humorous ditty about sitting next to Leonard Bernstein on a plane—and a lighthearted take on “Cool,” from Bernstein’s West Side Story.

With so much to appreciate in terms of execution and variety, the Avi Rothbard Trio delivered exactly as advertised, plus a few surprises thrown in for good measure, for a thoroughly enjoyable summertime gig that was the very essence of cool.

Looking forward…

| Tyran Grillo

Although I’ve reached a major milestone here at between sound and space, there’s little time to rest on my laurels. ECM will be releasing five albums stateside on June 2, so look out for those reviews soon, along with reviews of a few European-only releases, including Cyminology’s latest, Phoenix. I’m also preparing a small batch of articles and live reviews (among them, a stellar performance by Sheila Jordan with the Steve Kuhn Trio at Birdland) for All About Jazz. I will link to those as they appear.

Thanks to a new friend, I will soon be introducing a new “Rarities” category, diving into the most obscure ECM items on the planet. On a related note, I will be turning my attention back to the JAPO catalogue as well and hope to finish reviewing it within the year. In addition, I will be catching up on my reviews of ECM-related books, DVDs, and other such materials along the way.

Fifty Shades of Prey

| Tyran Grillo

Fifty Shades

On Valentine’s Day, Fifty Shades of Grey hit major theaters like a riding crop. Despite being among the many who abhor the premise of E. L. James’s bestselling novel of abusive male dominance, far be it from me to deny its fans’ fulfillments. But whether you see Shades the book as an abomination to women everywhere or a worthy instruction manual for couples wanting to spice the tepid gumbo of their sex lives, Shades the movie should frighten you. Director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s anticipated drama draws faithfully enough from its source text, following the sexual awakening of Anastasia “Ana” Steele at the hands of Christian Grey, a billionaire Adonis with a tragic past. Yet where the book is a fantasy crafted by a woman with women in mind, the film has only men and men’s standards in its crosshairs. In confronting viewers with explicit visual suggestions of how one should consume the exploits of characters better left to private imaginations, the film undermines any therapeutic potential they might have held.

For proof, one need only look at the film’s technical grammar. From its overwhelmingly gray palette (how many brain cells got freaky to make that cinematographic decision?) and overt phallic symbols (to wit: Christian’s towering office building and the monogrammed pencils on his desk, subject to the occasional suggestive close-up) to Ana’s incessant lip-biting (I stopped counting at 30 instances) and painless loss of virginity, the film’s pathos lends itself to effortless critique. Shades was filled with laughs—its makers didn’t take the film too seriously—but I’m willing to bet this was a calculated strategy to divert gazes away from the injurious messages at its core. It’s right there in the opening credits, over which Annie Lennox’s retread of “I Put a Spell on You” lays down the line: I put a spell on you because you’re mine. You better stop the things that you do. Christian may not be equipped with magic, but he has the next best thing: capital. During their first interview, Ana is as much attracted to his wealth and power—not to mention the rockin’ bod that seems to hug the skeleton of anyone in Hollywood with a few Benjamins to rub together—as to the broken child cowering beneath it all. Were it not for his rare combination of material assets, Ana would have no interest in Christian. His wealth “justifies” his abusive behavior.

Whatever the reason, a connection is born that neither of them is able to fight. Such is the film’s ridiculous attempt to justify all that follows: both are imperfect souls in a world brimming with them, and it’s all they can do to keep from trying to perfect each other. I get that. But as their relationship develops and the scent of their pheromones becomes too concentrated to sneeze out, a morbid game of give and take begins. Christian bids Ana to sign a detailed sexual contract that outlines his dominance and her submission in kind, while ensuring that love never enters the equation. Beyond the fact that even BDSM advocates have balked at this unrealistic premise (theirs, in fact, has been the most cogent denouncement so far), more troubling symptoms of gender bias lurk within.

Shades is a master class in heterosexism. This is obvious as early as the fateful interview, when Ana asks Christian if he is gay for the sole reason that he never goes out in public with a woman on his arm. In addition to confirming the stereotype that men and women think differently by sheer virtue of their biological divergence and that both must fit into predetermined roles, the question of Christian’s sexuality reinforces the notion that men—straight men—are insensitive by design. This double standard is clearest in the film’s treatment of the body at play. We can set aside the camera’s over-emphasis on Ana’s bare breasts and concealment of Christian’s penis—this is in keeping with the already sexist standards of what is permissible by the MPAA’s R rating. We can even ignore that only the exploits of the film’s most “beautiful” people matter—this despite the fact that on the page Ana’s roommate is described as “gamine and gorgeous,” while Ana struggles with her plain self-image.

What does deserve our attention is that Christian’s feelings matter far more than Ana’s in the film. Regardless of the intensity of any given sex scene, Ana never reaches orgasm on screen. While this might seem a clever way to avoid turning each of their encounters into a money shot, it puts a question mark above the goals of the characters involved. Furthermore, this downplaying of Ana’s pleasure has two unforgivable side effects. First, it brightens the spotlight on Christian’s needs. It’s no coincidence that he obtains the greatest and most obvious pleasure from Ana’s pain, as when he whips her with his belt in response to her demand that he dole out the most extreme punishment of which he’s capable. This incident moves Christian’s infatuation for Ana outside acceptable BDSM terms and into the realm of sexual sadism. Second, it proves that the fantasies put forth by the novel would crumble were they to be fully realized on screen. When he tells Ana, for example, “I don’t make love. I f**k. Hard,” one has to wonder how such a statement could be in any way alluring.

Whatever we may think of Christian’s physical attempts at capturing her for his prey, they’re nothing compared to the verbal tactics fed him by screenwriter Kelly Marcel. By its third iteration, his “It’s the way I am” mantra loses all effectiveness and imbues the proceedings with cheap desperation. The only function of that statement is to pave Ana’s submission as a path to his devotion. Yet the film supports a greater hypocrisy when their conversations turn to a family friend who made Christian his submissive from age 15 to 21. Christian reveals that this relationship was a healthy one for him, insofar as it freed him from the burden of responsibility at an impressionable age, and that they continue to be in regular contact. Ana grows jealous and condemns his “teacher” as a “child abuser,” even as she continues to pine for his increasingly violent affections. In contrast to the young Christian, Ana is inundated with responsibility, as he requires her to follow his every word, down to what she eats and drinks.

Though Shades the book has—affectionately, I might add—been called “mommy porn,” the film is more dangerous than pornography. In no uncertain terms, Hollywood’s capitalization on the book’s film potential is a mirror of the story’s gross sexual politics: a patriarchal moneymaking machine dominating a global market of feminized submissives without consent. Some would point out that, because the film was written and directed by women (even if Marcel’s script was tweaked by action veteran Mark Bomback, best known for The Wolverine), it’s somehow okay. Such an argument, however, smacks of reverse sexism and puts me in mind of Audre Lorde’s oft-quoted but rarely heeded prophecy: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” In this case, the master’s tools—be they signs of wealth or the instruments of torture arrayed in Christian’s infamous “Red Room of Pain”—only intensify the questionable nature of his reformation.

None of the above criticism is about me being too cool for the story (and in case you’re wondering, I’ve read it). It’s about the ongoing sickness of equating male domination with female empowerment. Let it be known that at the end of the trilogy Christian admits to Ana holding all the power in their relationship, but that it requires him to speak said power into being before she can claim it for her own. He is the one who defines it. And if self-empowerment can only be had through abusive trust, at what point does real abuse begin? It’s a vague proposition, and one that recalls the kind of rhetoric recently spouted by Utah State Representative Brian Greene, who questioned whether or not sex with an unconscious person counts as rape. As any BDSM practitioner will tell you, trust grows not through blind submission, but in active and mutual participation. It’s about offering, not sacrifice. And if the end result of apparent love is self-gratification through the reinforcement of a dominant male fantasy, then we might as well throw away the last century of feminist progress along with one of Christian’s spent condoms.

All told, my biggest worry is neither that men will think this is what women want nor that women will think this is what they need. It’s that those who identify with neither Christian nor Ana will feel left out of the conversation, and that those who witness this homophobic nightmare will never think to question the outdated gender dichotomy on which its story depends.

If this is what love looks like, then I shudder to think what hate might look like.

2014 in review

| Tyran Grillo

Some stats from WordPress regarding between sound and space for 2014. I had 240,000 views (nearly 800,000 to date). I wrote 120,000 words (700,000 to date). My busiest day was April 17, with 1251 views. My most popular reviews were diverse, including a 2011 piece on actor Bruno Ganz’s spoken word recordings for ECM. Other popular posts were my reviews of François Couturier’s Un jour si blanc and Ghazal’s The Rain.

I’m particularly grateful to Nate Chinen at The New York Times for including David Virelles’s Mbókò on his Top Albums of 2014 list, and for kindly linking to my review of said album. I’m also deeply honored to have had a blog post quoted in Ellen Johnson’s Jazz Child: A Portrait of Sheila Jordan. Seeing my words in print was an intense validation of what I do here.

In 2015, I plan to reach my goal of reviewing every ECM and ECM New Series album ever released. It’s been a five-year journey, and I am humbled by all who have followed me this far.

A few side notes:

  • Over at All About Jazz, for whom I’ve been writing with greater frequency as I approach the goal of this blog, my most popular article was a critical analysis of the film Whiplash.
  • For RootsWorld online magazine I was proudest of my piece on Marc Sinan’s Hasretim – Journey to Anatolia.
  • And finally I was grateful for the opportunity to expound my love for ECM New Series in an extended piece for Sequenza 21 celebrating the imprint’s 30th anniversary.

Above all, I feel blessed to be surrounded by so much significant music and to be able to squeeze in the time between academic and family commitments to share my passion with others in kind. Thank you for reading, and never stop listening.