Thoroughly enjoyed the Phillip Glass/Leonard Cohen collaboration, "Book of Longing" up at Rose Hall last Saturday night, big thanks to Judith Mallin for the ticket--Judith is a neighbor and a new friend of mine who has one of the biggest and best archives in the world in her west village loft devoted to surrealist art, she is delightful company and together we made a visit to the Nassau County Museum of Modern Art last Friday to check out their excellent "Surrealism" show curated by Constance Schwartz, which I urge you to see (if only for the late 30's--early 40's heirophantic/voluptuous drawings of Jackson Pollocks--rendered not at all in his signature splatter style, which came later...also some beautiful paintings by Matta, father of my Parisian musican friend Ramuntcho Matta...also some exqusite Ernst, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning, and De Chirico (my fave rave)--still, best of show--and not pictured unfortunately in the catalog--an actual jacket handmade by Eleanor Roosevelt--yes, that Eleanor Roosevelt--replete with appliqued demons and devils festooning the front and back that were also caricatures of 30's politicos/ "great men of history"-- I recognized Mussollini in there--with quasi-religious mottos embroidered on the back that commented sardonically on this witches brew/rogues gallery of world-historical gargoyles dear Quentin Roosevelt had desinged/conjured up and Eleanor had put her hand to realizing)...

I first encountered Phillip at a recording session in Soho for his first CBS Masterworks album "Glassworks" some time ago in the early 80's, after he'd been brought to Masterworks by their then visionary vice-president Christine Reed and my friend the producer/composer Richard Einhorn...this was after his triumphant collaboration with Robert Wilson, "Einstein On The Beach", whose spacy sci-fi finale remains my favorite music of his...it was very impressive to see his ensemble at work in the studio (whose membership then included another neighbor, composer/multi-instrumentalist Jon Gibson)--and I became, and remained, a fan (also met James Truman there for the first time, who was writing about Phillip for The Face)--I remember seeing the premiere of his opera "Satyagraha" at the SUNY Buffalo Art-Park a few years later, and also loved his score for the very trippy film with Godfrey Reggio "Koyaanaquatsi"...outside hearing an occasional film score of his though I hadn't actuallyattended a concert of his in many years...thus I am happy to report that this collaboration with Leonard Cohen, another favorite of mine, was on most counts a mesmerizing evening of music, in which various recent poems of Leonard Cohen were set to small ensemble new music arrangements and sung by various classical singers, with occasional taped interjections of the poet himself reading, and also pure instrumental interludes, the best of which were solo turns by Kate St. John on English horn and Eleonore Oppenheim on bowed double bass. The effect, combined with wonderful costumes by Kasia Maimone and drawings by Cohen himself (heavy on feminine deshabille) that shimmered and were projected on the wall behind the performers--not to mention some of Philip Glass' most compellingly introverted/non-generic chamber music in ages--was extremely seductive, as was the pacing of the show, which hurtled along nicely but still maintained an essential gravitas and, dare I say, world-weariness, behind Leonard Cohen's amusing late apercus (one of the best being "Not a Jew", which in total goes:

Anyone who says
I'm not a Jew
is not a Jew
I'm very sorry
but this decision is
is final

Perfect seque/backtrack to Thursday night 11pm, where I appeared on a panel at Mo Pitkin's club in the East Village, on the subject of "Jewish Punk", in the company of my pal Danny Fields, who was as sagacious and side-splitting as he usually is, also "American Hardcore" director and former Seconds Magazine editor Steve Blush; also Russel Wolinski, formerly of Tish and Snooky's fabulous Sic F*cs (of "Spanish Bar-Mitzvah" fame)...the whole Bookbinder-Rinus was presided over by Steve Beeber, imp of the perverse author behind the seminal tome "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's" (Chicago Review Press), who brought his friend the lovely Sara Kochanowski down with him from Boston to add a certain jouissance to the proceedings, also inda house was lovely Deenah from Secret Salamander, Brice Rosenbloom, a veteran of the nyc booking wars and currently the Mo Pitkins' pickmeister, and a whole lot more folks, got the club to serve us potato latkes with sour cream and apple sauce to keep up the old esprit semitique (they used to feature a heart-attack burger there with a dollop of chopped chicken liver on top of the juicy patty--but we could only get sliders this time 'o night, zut alors)...

s'okay as I had REALLY chowed down aforehand at the Permanent Mission of the Czech Embassy to the UN up on 83rd and Madison, where I had performed earlier in the evening playing solo acoustic arrangements on my Gibson J-45 and National steel of music by Dvorak, Smetana, and the Plastic People of the Universe--the "Czech classics", in other words, to quote my friend Richard "Faust" Mader--at a party for a departing member of the staff, Janina Hrebickoba, and lots of UN dignitaries abounding, including Andrzej Towpik, the current Polish ambassador to the UN, with whom I had my photo taken along with my old friend Martin Palous, the Czech UN ambassador, who was giving the party--and in fact, was the guy responsible for commissioning my arrangements of this Czech classical music on the occasion of the 14th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution a few years ago when I performed at the Czech Embassy in DC...in attendance Thursday night was the lovely head of the Czech Cultural Office, Monika Koblerova, Martin's wife Pavla, and a bevy of fun and interesting folks...

Heading uptown soon to catch my pal Harry Hamlin, who's is in town with his radiant wife Lisa Rinna (who had a wicked cameo on "Entourage" couple weeks ago), as both of them are starring in the current production of "Chicago" on Broadway (having honed their hoofing skills recently on "Dancing With the Stars")...Harry always was a good singer as well, going back to the Tim 'n Slim days when we were at Yale together (would have made a hell of a Jim Morrison back in the day, pre-Oliver Stone/Val Kilmer)...

xxLove

Gary

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Posted By Gary Lucas to Gary Lucas at 7/17/2007 02:47:00 PM