KAZAAM! love songs, recollections, and contemporary improvisations

Demetrius Spaneas, winds, and Jeffrey Goldberg, piano

Please join us for our annual Boston-area concert where we weave improvisations on Bach to Beatles to Coltrane to Cabaret…usually all in the same tune!

Jeffrey Goldberg’s mentors include Luise Vosgerchian, Sarah Benson,
Leonard Bernstein, and Joe Maneri. His improvisations have been
featured at Palau de la Música Catalana and the Darmstadt Festival of
Contemporary Music. His compositions range from music used for sound
healing to two commissions by the Hannover Opera: an electronic ballet
on the life of Marlene Dietrich; and an opera that set a Wagnerian
libretto to klezmer music, and featured the first use of rap on a
German opera stage. He collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin
in the film “Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood,” and has been a piano soloist
with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops.

Dr. Goldberg has served as music-director for several Boston-area
theatres (including Gloucester Stage Company, the Sugan Company, the
Nora Theatre), and as a vocal coach/conductor with the State Operas of
Hannover, Darmstadt, and, currently, Chemnitz. He has served on the
faculties of Harvard, Boston Arts Academy, The Rivers School
Conservatory, and New England Conservatory of Music (Preparatory
School/Continuing Education).

Multi-wind instrumentalist/composer/c​onductor/recording artist Demetrius Spaneas leads a varied international career and has worked with such diverse artists as John Cage, Ray Charles, and Kyrgyz traditional musicians. He has been featured soloist and composer at major concert venues and festivals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Through his work with the US Embassy system, he has presented concerts and lectures on American music and culture throughout the former Soviet Union. Interested in connecting cultures and creating international artistic dialogue through cultural diplomacy, his current initiatives focus on Central Asia, the Balkans, China, and Russia. He has won grants and awards from ASCAP, Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, and other organizations, including a special certificate from the Russian Duma (senate) for enriching the cultural life of St. Petersburg. Mr. Spaneas, a New York City-based artist, is a native of Lowell, MA and holds both bachelor and master of music degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music where he studied classical and jazz performance, composition, and world music. Recordings on Capstone and DSM (as soloist), and Cantaloupe, Mode, Centaur, and BMOPSound (as ensemble member).

Monday, August 1 · 7:00pm

Lily Pad

1353 Cambridge Street

Cambridge, Massachusetts

From Lily Pad show, 25 July 2010

From Lily Pad show, 25 July 2010

From Lily Pad show, 25 July 2010

From Lily Pad show, 25 July 2010

From Lily Pad show, 25 July 2010

(photos by Allison Ahearn)

Time for Part II; I *did* warn you…

To recap what I mused about in Part I: our sound environment, our ‘soundscape,’ has become louder; the general volume of urban life has increased. I believe that this is effecting us on numerous levels, not the least of them being a loss of sensitivity to delicate and nuanced sounds. We are becoming ‘deafer’ as a society.

Now…this trend has obviously effected how we listen to music (and amplified sound of all forms) as well. The need for more and more volume is obvious on the macrocosmic scale in amplified concerts and movie theaters where body-distorting sound has become the norm. Even just yesterday, I was walking through Union Square and was treated to the immense volume of a live rock band. Now, granted, they were highly amplified to compete with the surrounding soundscape of Union Square, which is quite intense. However, the volume was increased to such a level where distortion trumped any form of nuance (which really didn’t exist in any form). Much of this can be blamed on the sound personnel who were probably either young and inexperienced (have never dealt with balance and nuance) or older with damaged hearing–the young ones most likely have damaged hearing, as well….which brings me to:

The microcosmic scale. The incredible level of volume that people have their mp3 devices turned up to. My Heavens, if I can hear what you’re playing through your headphones and even determine specific lyrics, you have completely fried your hearing and have lost the entire upper echelon of your sound perception.

It has always been a given that rock musicians (and rock enthusiasts)  have lost their upper echelon hearing, meaning that they have a much lower ceiling for what they can perceive. Allow me to explain:

We measure pitch (frequency) in cycles per second, more commonly known as Hertz, or Hz; the tuning note ‘A’ that orchestras use is approximately (depending on region of the world) 440 Hz. At peak, the human ear can perceive up to 20,000 Hz…at PEAK. Dogs have up to 35,000 Hz, which is why they can hear dog whistles, which sit between 20,000 Hz (doesn’t bother us because we can’t hear it) and 35,000 Hz and annoys them greatly (because they CAN hear it).

Now, constant exposure to loud noise, especially those noises that have a great deal of force in the upper spectrum of Hz, causes irreversible damage to hearing in that range. Many rock musicians of old, and many youths and young adults today, have lost most–if not all–of their upper range hearing. Many now have their thresholds well under 10,000 Hz, and some even far, far lower. The top note of the piano is 2,000 Hz, and some have trouble even perceiving that…that means they have lost 90% of their ceiling.

I also believe that mp3 technology has added to this problem greatly. The mp3 compresses the sound spectrum of a recording; this is why it is easily downloadable and takes up far less space than the standard recording files. Because of this, the recordings we hear on mp3 are missing something…there is a lot of middle, but very little else. If we are listing to an orchestra recording on mp3, we lose the top (and much of the bottom) of the orchestra–we get the notes, but we lose the depth and space.

[Note: it has to be remembered that we don't just have a pure note in music--a sine wave (created in a studio only, not so in reality) is pure and has no overtones, and overtones (harmonics) give a sound its character, which is why we can tell the difference between a flute and a trombone; we lose the upper characteristics in a compressed format like mp3]

To make a long story short, people are trained now from a young age not to consciously miss the overtones (ceiling) because of the compressed mp3 format they have grown up with–they unconsciously know something is missing in the sound (in relation to CDs and live music) although they have no idea what it is, so they turn up the volume in their headphones to compensate.

And they lose more hearing…

I notice this constantly in my students and other young people I work with. I am amazed what they can’t perceive, and that they actually have no idea what to listen to.

*************************************************************

Now, I’m a ‘color’ guy. What I mean by this is that I believe that tone, timbre, and color flexibility are the most important aspects of music making and individual expression. Any trained monkey can play scales and patterns fast and clean–that takes nothing, and unfortunately it has become the standard approach to training young musicians at most colleges and conservatories (and younger!).

In Part III, I’ll discuss the construction of modern instruments and how the sound environment and the instrument market has influenced both the overall volume increase and also the decrease of perception of color, nuance, and of overall skill of younger musicians.

Best and thank you,

Demetrius

Dear All,

It is with great pleasure that I announce that I am a recipient for the Exploring the Metropolis/2011 Con Edison Composer-in-Residence award.

This award allows me the opportunity to use the wonderful space at Queen’s lovely Flushing Town Hall for three months this fall as rehearsal space, performance venue, and work studio.

Eight composers were chosen–four for fall, four for spring–representing the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. My residency will culminate in a concert of my music during the residency period (September 1-November 30), date TBA.

Information on Exploring the Metropolis and the other resident composers may be found here:

http://exploringthemetropolis.org/announcing-our-2011-con-edison-composers-in-residence
I wish to thank Exploring the Metropolis, Con Edison, and the deciding artistic board for giving me this wonderful opportunity.

Best to all, and thank you for your continued support.

Demetrius

The world–at least the industrialized world–is loud.

There’s a statement…and here is another:

Everything is compensating for the loudness by becoming LOUDER.

This is something that I have been becoming more and more aware of. Warning: I will be making general statements about the ‘sound environment,’ but will become more specific and will comment on modern acoustic instruments and their construction.

We have all heard the term ‘noise pollution.’ I believe that this term was coined in the 70′s when the idea of noise changed from being considered a nuisance to become viewed as an environmental problem. Of course, while many events such as low-passing aircraft are considered noise pollution by pretty much everyone, other environmental noise issues are more subjective to the point of being accepted as part of modern urban life. Those of us who have lived most, if not all, of our lives in urban environments supposedly (and maybe with some truth) have adapted to the point of disregarding–or even being consciously unaware of–the amount of the noise in our neighborhoods and general environment.

So…instead of using the term ‘noise pollution,’ I am going to take it from a different angle. I am going to use the term ‘soundscape.’ On Wikipedia (not my favorite nor most reliable source, but a good one in this case) soundscape is identified as: a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment. The study of soundscape is the subject of acoustic ecology. The idea of soundscape refers to both the natural acoustic environment, consisting of natural sounds, including animal vocalizations and, for instance, the sounds of weather and other natural elements; and environmental sounds created by humans, through musical composition, sound design, and other ordinary human activities including conversation, work, and sounds of mechanical origin resulting from use of industrial technology. The disruption of these acoustic environments results in noise pollution.

This is pretty good.

The obvious question is: what is our given soundscape?And how is it effecting how we perceive sound and how we react and communicate within our given environment(s)?

Well, I live in NYC. NYC is LOUD. I am becoming more amazed not only with the tremendous amount of powerful noise producers that brashly enter my environment–such as low-flying airplanes, subway/trains, car horns, etc–but especially with the amount of ‘carpet noise’ (my term) in my environment. There are layers of noise constantly sounding around me. these can be fans/air-conditioners, basic automobile operating noise, and various other electronic or mechanical systems. When the more obtrusive noises enter the environment, the ‘carpet noises’ fade more into the background (like at the moment I just wrote this sentence, a city bus screeched at a close intersection), but they are still there, like waves on the ocean: a big wave may crest and fall, but the general current continues.

I really noticed this while recently in rural Portugal for five weeks. At night, in my room, I…heard…nothing…it was like there was this empty space surrounding me. The smallest sound that would go absolutely unnoticed in an urban setting became the aggressive invader into my environment, disrupting my soundscape…

…it was disturbing…

So, intrepid reader, you may ask why I am musing about the sound environment of NYC and of rural Portugal and other locations; we all know that cities are loud and that the country is quiet–been like this for decades, even centuries, right?

Well, kind of…

What I am getting at (eventually; you’ll have to wait for Part II, I’m afraid) is how the modern urban (sound) landscape has been one of the major factors influencing the development and construction of modern acoustic instruments. There are other factors, too, that are more ‘social’ and ‘societal’ in nature (I’ll hit them all, don’t worry–I find some of these societal issues rather disturbing, and the overall effect has been a complete collapse of skill in crucial areas of sound production–boy, THAT’S a statement right there!) but the most startling is the general noise environment.

It will be a ride; I’ll write Part II in a day or two.

Thanks and Best!

Demetrius

Greetings All,

I am writing to share with you three recently uploaded videos from my solo program “Metanoia: a monologue on life, loss, and rebirth,” performed as part of the Composers Collaborative, inc. (CCi) ‘Serial Underground’ series at the Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC on April 12, 2010.

Enjoy!

Demetrius

I am playing improvisations on three of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Zodiac” (Tierkeis) pieces: “Aries,” “Leo,” and “Sagittarius.”

“Three Graces for Clarinet Solo” : “Aglaea” (Beauty), “Euphrosyne” (Mirth), and “Thalia” (Good Cheer). Composed by me.

“Courante” and “Sarabande” from “…no longer to his father…,” a contemporary suite of dances for solo saxophone based on the Baroque suite. Composed by me.