Luciano Berio
1925–2003
Classical music lost one of its great iconoclasts when the composer Luciano Berio died in a Rome hospital last week at the age of 77. One of the most prominent members of the European avant-garde that came of age in the 1950s and ’60s, Berio was one of the few whose involvement with the past never got lost in the headlong rush for novelty and change. His musical personality was like that of a river that gathers up innumerable tributaries and bears them along, still visible, in a new direction.
Berio’s eclecticism makes his style hard to describe concretely. Some of his works sound as thorny as anything being produced at Darmstadt, the avant-garde summer school that he attended in the 1950s. But the catholicity of his musical tastes, including jazz and folk, gave some of his works a playfulness often sorely lacking in those of his contemporaries. He seemed to strive against categorization throughout his career. Speaking about his colleague last week from Southern California, Pierre Boulez told the Los Angeles Times, " Berio had a theatrical genius that made his music very accessible and free from dogma. We all had a problem with trying to get free of the rules, and he found a way to do it. "
Bostonians had their most recent encounter with Berio earlier this year when David Robertson conducted the BSO in Sinfonia, one of his best-known scores. It’s a musical mélange in which text and music attract and repel one another, and tradition and innovation collide. Hearing the famous third movement — a reworking of the scherzo from Mahler’s Second Symphony with musical quotations and various scraps of assorted texts layered over, under, and through it — one was struck less by its seeming chaos than by the way moments of order repeatedly emerged from it. If some of it sounded dated and kitschy, it was also the perfect work to refract the clash of sensibilities of the late 1960s, when it was written.
Among his other works, a series of Sequenzas for solo instruments will likely remain one his most important contributions. These solos are notable for the ways they imply a broader harmony; they also stretched the limits of a player’s virtuosity — a virtuosity, Berio noted, not only technical but intellectual as well. The last of them, written for the accordion, is yet another fusion of music, including tango and cabaret. It brings to mind another tribute to the late composer from an unexpected source, superstar tenor Luciano Pavarotti. Berio was, he said, " a great artist who knew how to cross the sometimes too narrow barriers between musical genres, showing that when there is art and love for music, labels don't matter anymore. "
— David Weininger
Bye-bye Hi-Fi
Behind every good rock scene is at least one cozy, ramshackle record shop — the kind of place stacked with used vinyl as well as the latest discs by your local DIY indie-pop and punk-rock outfits, a place that’s comfy and scattered and has cool bands playing in the corner every now and again, a place where you can get David Bowie’s Hunky Dory or a pair of hand-silk-screened Bowie undies. You know, a place like the record store in High Fidelity. That’s the sort of place Jamaica Plain’s Hi-Fi Records has been for the past seven years — during which the shop has played clubhouse to a burgeoning Jamaica Plain rock scene triangulated by the Mister Records label and the Milky Way Lounge and Lanes. And now that proprietor Deb Klein is closing up shop and moving to New York, a farewell party is in order. The " Hi-Fi Records Goodbye Bash: Pop, Nonsense, and Alarm " takes place this Friday, June 6, at the Milky Way — just down the street from the shop, which is located at 620 Centre Street.
The bash at the Milky Way will feature short sets by the Pills, the Brett Rosenberg Problem, Soltero, the Anchormen, Francine, super-cool lo-fi indie-pop kids Mittens, Fuzzy, the Count Me Outs, and Spoilsport — not to mention the Shods, who get to perform longer by virtue of having played the shop’s grand-opening gala back in 1996, and Klein’s own band, the Mary Reillys. Admission is free, and Klein will also be handing out a free, one-time-only CD compilation of songs recorded live at the Hi-Fi, including tracks by many of the above, plus Mr. Airplane Man, Mary Timony, and sub-pop buzz-punks the Thermals. The show kicks off at 9 p.m.; the Milky Way is at 405 Centre Street in Jamaica Plain; call (617) 524-3740.
Hello, Mayflower
And as we say farewell to Hi-Fi, we say hello to Mayflower Music, a new guitar shop in Roslindale. The shop is a labor of love for local guitarist and long-time guitar collector Pat MacDonald, who’d hoarded so much vintage gear over the years that he’d been renting a storage space to hold it all. For years, he’s been known as one of Boston’s go-to guys for gear, and the list of local rock folks who’ve borrowed instruments from him stretches from the late Mark Sandman to Mary Timony. Last year, MacDonald realized that his guitars were appreciating in value far more than his 401(k) plan, so he cashed out the latter and found a storefront in Roslindale Village. Until recently, the national trend has been toward chain superstores and the Internet — MacDonald himself has purchased more than a few guitars through eBay. But he’s betting there’s still room for a tastefully stocked local shop that will be a destination for serious six-string fiends, and he’s leveraged his vintage collection with a stock of newer, affordable imports.
" Well, Mars Music went out of business last fall, " MacDonald points out, " and in the whole southern tier of Boston — Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, that whole segment — there’s no music stores. You’ve got to go into town. So I thought there might be room for a neighborhood place. When I was a kid I’d go to places like that, and you grow up with them. "
The shop has been operating since April, but this weekend marks its official grand opening, with in-store performances on Saturday, June 7, by Fuzzy’s Chris Toppin at 7 p.m., and at 8 p.m. by Toppin’s bandmate Hilken Mancini, with Chris Colbourn. These latter two are also the principals in the Mayflowers, a full-band version of the duo that includes MacDonald and also provided the inspiration for the store’s name. On Sunday, June 8, the Mark Poniatowski Jazz Duo performs at 1 p.m., followed by a staff jam session — which ought to be a loud one, since said staff includes Thom Termini (guitar tech for Adema, who’re fronted by Korn singer Jonathan Davis’s little brother), Johnny O’Halloran (who’s already begun to regale the neighbors with his mastery of the musical saw), and Boston hardcore stalwart Keith Bennett, the former Wrecking Crew bassist turned Weekly Dig metal critic. Mayflower Music is at 4288 Washington Street in Roslindale; call (617) 323-8023.
‘Cellu-Loud’
Back for a second year, the Coolidge Corner’s " Cellu-Loud " series teams indie rockers who turn up the volume on rare and avant-garde silent-film classics. The series kicks off this Friday, June 6, with the Lothars bringing their multiple-theremin instrumentation to bear on Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Mary Timony, who in last year’s inaugural edition of Cellu-Loud accompanied several short animated fables by the Polish filmmaker Ladislas Starewicz, returns to accompany the first-ever animated feature film, the German director Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). Based on The Arabian Nights, it’s a tale populated — as are Timony’s songs — with witches, princesses, demons, sorcerers, and tainted love. That’s June 13. An equally inspired pairing of film and music comes on June 20, with the vaudevillian cracked-country fiend Reverend Glasseye — whose backing band goes by the name His Wooden Legs — accompanying The Penalty (1920), in which Lon Chaney plays Blizzard, a paraplegic seeking vengeance on the doctor who mangled his amputation. And on June 27, Karate singer/guitarist Geoff Farina, who also has an album of solo jazz guitar on the local Kimchee label, presents the local debut of a program he’s been touring with in Europe — a soundtrack for three silent avant-garde films. These include Man Ray’s Emak Bakia (1927); the Samuel Beckett–penned Film (1965), in which Buster Keaton tries to evade the camera; and Jean Genet’s Un chant d’amour (1950). All the above begin Friday nights at midnight — technically first thing Saturday morning, but since we’re on rock time, it’s still Friday — at the Coolidge, 290 Harvard Street in Brookline. Tickets are $10, available at the Coolidge or through www.ticketweb.com. Call (617) 734-2501.
