The Orange County Register, September 12th, 2006
William Bolcom wasn’t what I expected. Thank goodness.
I was a nervous 23-year-old, freshly arrived in Ann Arbor from Canada, excited and more than a little intimidated to be accepted into the prestigious graduate program in musical composition at the University of Michigan.
Bolcom was to be my teacher.
I had heard of him, of course. Brilliant. Mercurial. Former child prodigy. Award-winning composer, scholar of ragtime music, whiz-bang pianist. With his wife, singer Joan Morris, Bolcom also led a second career as a performing duo that specialized in the classics of American popular song, from Stephen Foster to Buddy Holly.
Orange County got its first big dose of Bolcom a few years back, when his gargantuan cycle, “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” was played by the Pacific Symphony. He returns to Orange County on Friday when “Canciones de Lorca,” a song cycle based on the poems of Federico Garcia Lorca, will be given its world premiere by singer Plácido Domingo and the Pacific Symphony with the Pacific Chorale.
It’s part of the symphony’s first official concert at Costa Mesa’s new Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall – one of the highlights of a weekend of performances and parties.
Even in the early ’80s, Bolcom was landing such prestigious orchestral commissions. But he was no inaccessible careerist. He turned out to be exactly what I needed – an irreverent breath of fresh air sweeping away my fears that Michigan would be a frosty academic enclave.
“First off, I’m Bill,” he said in his singsong voice at the beginning of our first lesson. “Not Professor Bolcom. Or William. Or sir.”
And Bolcom made the right suggestions: “Find what excites you and obsess over it,” he used to say.
Bolcom was the anti-prof. Drove an old Cadillac convertible like a NASCAR veteran. Lived in a sprawling house outside town, the site of many legendary parties. (He and Joan performed a zippy version of “Yakety Yak” at their living-room grand piano during one of my first visits.) A human dynamo, Bolcom didn’t enter a room so much as lay siege to it – he was then in his mid-40s, but after each hourlong weekly lesson I felt pooped just trying to keep up with his quicksilver mind and constant chatter.
A quarter of a century later, Bolcom hasn’t changed much as he nears his 70th birthday.
Of course, his career achievements have piled up since I knew him; among his many honors are a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award for composition. But the old, greased-lightning conversational style is still there. You need to be awake, coffeed up and well-studied to hold your own with Bill.
“Lorca was from Granada, the home of flamenco, so there’s flamenco and Gypsy atmosphere all over his work. And he was an excellent musician. He had a music degree and could play piano very well. And he was pals with all the great artists of the time in Spain – he and Dali had a funny friendship. And he’s very downbeat. His plays, especially ‘The House of Bernardo Alba’ and ‘Blood Wedding,’ have to do with the dark reality of life in Spain at the time – you know, the Franco years. To help prepare myself, I watched a wonderful old movie shot in the ’30s, showing how really poor some of the Spanish villages were – on hillsides with little water, scratching in the very dry ground to put some seeds down and try to subsist. Once I saw that, I began to see how Lorca could be looked at in a way that made sense to me.”
See what I mean? And that’s a short Bolcom outburst.
Southern California’s “University of Michigan Mafia” had a hand in Bolcom’s presence at the concert hall’s opening weekend. He goes back decades with Carl St.Clair, the Pacific Symphony’s longtime music director, who was a member of Michigan’s faculty in the ’80s. “I remember Carl from when he was a junior assistant spear carrier,” Bolcom joked.
Not quite. Back then, St.Clair helmed a crackerjack university ensemble that specialized in performing new music. He conducted many of Bolcom’s works, and the two became fast friends. It’s no surprise that St.Clair will be conducting a fresh score by Bolcom to inaugurate his ensemble’s new home.
Bolcom loves the hall. During a recent visit he had a chance to hear its acoustics. “It seems like a fine, fine building,” he said. “I noticed that when you’re underneath the balcony, you hear an odd effect. You can actually pinpoint the exact location of each player on stage. That’s a fascinating thing. Fascinating.”
Bolcom says the commission gave him a few sleepless nights. “When we all settled on the Lorca, I was a bit nervous – I had to set Spanish (to music), which I’d never done before in my life. I made some errors, but of course I’m surrounded by great people, so they were caught.”
Domingo, an international opera and classical-music star, took an active interest in the commission, though he and Bolcom didn’t spend a lot of time collaborating.
“He’s a very busy man, so he doesn’t work closely with anybody. I spent a few hours with him last year. He had actually chosen six (Lorca) poems he wanted me to do. I kept four and chose three of my own. I wanted contrast.
“It was an extremely tough project, working with an unfamiliar language, getting all the nuances right. But I think Plácido wants to do it again, which makes me very happy!”
Talking to Bolcom is like taking a Disney ride in which the theme isn’t pirates or Alice in Wonderland but the rich world of Western culture. During our interview, a single Bolcom outburst – a rapid stream of connected and scholarly thought that lasted seven uninterrupted minutes – touched on Indian ragas, Bob Marley, Claudio Monteverdi, Rip Torn, Morton Feldman, cante jondo style, Estelle Parsons, legendary tango singer Carlos Gardel, composer Darius Milhaud, playwrights Arthur Miller and Bertolt Brecht, the concept of duende, Galician Gypsies, the Phrygian scale, and flamenco clapping techniques.
In that order.
I’d show you the quote, but it might make you dizzy.
The energy and the magpie-like interest in everyone and everything are pure Bolcom – qualities that will live on even after he retires from the University of Michigan faculty when he turns 70 in 2008.
Bolcom is still tweaking his song cycle. “We’re still evolving, still perfecting. One very interesting example: brio. The way that word was sung.
“I had it set with the accent on the first syllable. But Plácido said, ‘No, this way is more Gypsy.’ And then he put the turn on the second syllable.
“Those are the subtleties that terrified me, and they still do. And the problems we had with the Lorca estate, securing the rights – I can’t tell you how much trouble that was.”
Bolcom laughed. “But it was all worth it. It reminded me of the time I was working with my dear friend Arnold Weinstein on our musical, ‘Dynamite Tonight!’ I had just gotten to New York, and it was quite a scene back in those days … .”
Another round of Mr. Bolcom’s Wild Ride had begun. I was ready – the tape recorder was running, and I clutched a double latte in my hand.
COMPOSER: Pulitzer Prize-winner William Bolcom’s work will get its world premiere here.
