"The Spider's Web"

I was thinking about the WGBH radio program "The Spider's Web" that I listened to (in both Boston and New York) during the 1970s, and I was, sadly, unable to find the recording they used of the theme song, which I believe was sung by Odetta.

A great big thanks goes to these girls, who are teaching others how to harmonize it on YouTube.



And here's a recording of the song by an unnamed grown-up, who, kindly, is sharing the words and chords online.

I wrote two posts about the radio show back in 2009.

Nuages and Georgia on our Minds

We made this recording at the request of one of Michael's blog readers. We decided to do it during the day so that we could take advantage of the light. It is fun for us to do these one-take recordings with listeners in mind. It's almost like playing for people in real time and space. I suppose it is becoming a new musical normal.

Just as we had everything set up to record (with dinner in the oven), we got a FaceTime call from some special grandkiddos. With instruments close at hand, we were able to warm up for this recording "session" by playing a few rollicking choruses of "Twinkle, Twinkle" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" for them.

Frances Shrand: The Most Beautiful Voice on Radio

I knew Frances Shrand as the mother of my friend Joe (who was one of the original members of the cast of Zoom), and as the reader of The Wind and the Willows on a Boston-based radio program called "The Spider's Web," a program I mentioned in my last post about Brother Blue. Joe was also on the program, playing the part of the rat.

I just found out that she died this past March. I also learned from her obituary that she was born in Brooklyn.

I was once at a party at the Shrand house when I was a young teenager. Some of the young teenagers at the party had gotten into a bit of trouble, and Frances insisted on calling the parents of all the people who were there. When my father got the call from Frances, he practically melted. Whatever humiliating (to me) reason she called was meaningless to him. He was tickled to hear her voice--the one he knew from the radio, and admired greatly.

You can listen to her (and Joe) read the The Wind and the Willows here.

Brother Blue

I suppose that I must have met Brother Blue near the beginning of his life as a public storyteller. I met him at a concert in New York, sometime in the later 1970s, somewhere downtown, in a loft. Percussionist Gordon Gottlieb and his pianist twin brother Jay invited me to their concert of improvisations with a storyteller they thought I would like. Shortly afterward I heard Brother Blue tell stories on the NPR program "The Spider's Web," (broadcast from WGBH in Boston), and it was only when I returned to Boston in 1982 or so that I actually saw him in action as a storyteller in Cambridge.

There was a jazz band playing on the street in Harvard Square, and Brother Blue was there. I said hello to him, and mentioned that I met him in New York, and he took my hand and we started dancing. It was tremendous fun. He was an extraordinarily musical person, and an excellent dancer.

I would encounter him from time to time, and would listen to him tell stories, usually to a rather large crowd of people, and the next time I talked with him was on a bus in Cambridge.

Last summer Michael and I believe we saw him walking down Harvard Street in Brookline. He was not wearing Blue, and looked like an elderly gentleman. He even walked with a cane. Neither of us could believe that Brother Blue could be as old as this man who walked with a cane and shared his face. But, at 87 or 88, I suppose he was.

What will Cambridge do without Brother Blue?

Musical Connection

Last week I had the amazing opportunity to play a violin and piano reduction in an abridged version (cut down to an hour) of The Marriage of Figaro. I got to be on stage, in close proximity to the singers, and I had the chance to connect musically with the characters and the pianist in truly intense ways.

The musical rapport I have with this pianist runs deep, the music was the best of the best of the best, I got to play on a Mozart-era violin with a 18th-century bow, and I was on a temporary reprieve from physical pain and compromised sleep thanks to a z-pack of prednisone. It was the best of all possible musical worlds for me.

That kind of musical connection, which can't help but stimulate musical connection for people who are listening, is really something amazing. It isn't something that you can manufacture, but it is something you can prepare yourself for by practicing and listening, and something you can hope to catch and carry when you recognize it might be there.

While I was practicing Bach today (on the viola, which has new strings), I marveled at how connection happens on an internal level as well, and that it deserves attention. The linear relationship between one note and the next is indeed a relationship. And it is an ever-chaning one which requires constant attention, particularly for string players. How the bow makes it possible for one note to connect to the next note physically is loaded with a great deal of variety: speed, pressure, where in the bow you are, the dynamic level, tension on the string due to higher positions, strength of the hand, and what the intentional direction of a phrase might be.

Then there's connection between the person playing and the composer, which is something I feel often. Playing music written by a person who is no longer living brings their otherwise muted voice to life.

As performing and practicing musicians we have the great fortune of joining our voices, instruments, and brains with people who are no longer living and that we never could have otherwise communicated with due to language, time period, class, gender, or physical proximity. We also get to connect with living composers, and allow them to hear the music that they composed and notated in new ways.

Speaking as a composer, there is nothing I enjoy more than hearing something I have written in a new voice, and with an interpretation I couldn't have imagined.

I also love the connection that I have when playing with the other people elsewhere who might be practicing the same piece that I am practicing. And I love the experience of running into something puzzling or difficult (or amusing) in a Classical Period string quartet, and knowing that the musical situation had been encountered before by generation upon generation of string quartet players.

And then there's the profound connection that Michael and I have over FaceTime with our five-month-old granddaughter when we sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."