S&F Recommends: MAKING BELIEVE by Harry Bolles

by Megan Kurashige

We can’t recommend this album highly enough. Making Believe is a collection of eleven astonishingly lovely songs sung by Harry Bolles, whose voice is pure, gorgeously human, magic. Harry sings so beautifully and so effortlessly. He makes you feel happy and sad in all the best ways. He makes you long for all the things that are so easy to imagine as perfect. This is Harry’s first album and it features his brilliant guitar and ukulele playing, as well as the talents of a few of his great musician friends (Kim Cass, Nate Brenner, and Michael Coleman). It also has Harry’s version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark,” which is probably one of our favorite things in the world.

We love it.

If you saw our Queen of Knives, you heard Harry:

 

This is what he says about Making Believe:

This record represents the jazzier selections from my live set, which always includes at least one Hoagy Carmichael song (Skylark) and one Disney song (In A World of My Own). I like to have a wide variety of genres in my performances and I love to feature songs written by my songwriter friends. On this record I am proud to include a song by Jesse Rimler (I Am Wiser Now), a very talented musician and songwriter in Oakland, CA. I am attracted to a song’s melody first and foremost, and his song fit in with these other chestnuts very comfortably.

About the musicians: They are the cream of the crop. I am honored and humbled to be accompanied by such talent as these three men.

You can acquire this marvelous record for your own collection via Bandcamp HERE. Harry is asking a meager $5 for these gems, so it would be completely silly of you to deny yourself the pleasure of them.

Harry is a wonderful friend who recently moved to Brooklyn. He does magic tricks and builds guitars. We miss him very much. If you live in NY, you should follow him on Twitter and pester him to play a live show. Or get him to teach you how to play the guitar. Or do a card trick. The one with all the kings and queens is hilarious.

Photos by Laura Jones

Beautiful Singing

by Megan Kurashige

We asked Ina to find an aria that is glorious and epic and full of blooming beauty. We want something lush and vivid, something so powerfully gorgeous that it verges on either heroic or overwhelming, uncrushable and incapable of being trodden down.

She sent us six different ones to listen to. They’re so beautiful that I feel like we should share.

1. “L’amero, saro costante” from Il Re Pastore by Mozart. This version is sung by Anna Moffo.

2. “Prendi, per me sei libero” from L’Elisir D’Amore by Donizetti. This version is Beverly Sills.

3. “Caro Nome” from Rigoletto by Verdi. This version is Edita Gruberova.

4. “Je veux vivre” from Roméo et Juliette by Gounod. This is Sumi Jo.

5. “Quel guardo il cavaliere” from Don Pasquale by Donizetti. This is Anna Netrebko.

6. “Una voce poco fa” from The Barber of Seville by Rossini. This is Lucia Popp.

Love Songs

by Megan Kurashige

The project that we are just starting to work on now (BRAND-SPANKING-SWEETLY NEW!) has something to do with love and love songs. I asked friends to offer up their favorite love songs to make into a playlist for our first rehearsal. They came back with an odd and addictive assortment, a list that stands at 63 recommendations so far and ranges from Joy Division to The Flamingos to Tchaikovsky. You can find that list below (complete with YouTube links) and, for those who wish to become fully sappy-eared, a YouTube playlist of all 63  HERE. You, too, may wallow in the songs that, to my friends, mean love.

I was too cowardly to actually take a stance on my “favorite” love songs, but I did write about three that mean a great deal to me (hint: Schubert, Elvis, the Kinks).

And Shannon L. (our beloved Sleypoldt) wrote about four of her favorites HERE.

LOVE SONGS FROM FRIENDS

Dan Wool:

“Love Will Tear Us Apart” – Joy Division

Amis Maldonado:

“Ruler of My Heart” – Irma Thomas

“You and Me” – Penny & The Quarters

Stella Stastny:

“The Book of Love” – The Magnetic Fields

Amber Hsu:

“Come Wander With Me” – Bonnie Beecher

Ali Trotta:

“Ice Cream” – Sarah McLachlan

Clare Mallaney:

“A Sunday Kinda Love” – Etta James

Marc Jacobs:

“Is She Really Going Out With Him?” – Joe Jackson

Gabrielle Zucker:

“Happy Together” – The Turtles

“I Only Have Eyes For You” – The Flamingos

“You and Your Sister” – This Mortal Coil

“The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” – Morrissey

“If I Didn’t Care” – The Ink Spots

“Songbird” – Fleetwood Mac

Penelope Barcelo:

“Kiss” – Scout Niblett & Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Neil Gaiman:

“Holding Your Hand” – Thea Gilmore

“Vegemite (The Black Death)” – Amanda Palmer

“Love Will Tear Us Apart” – Nouvelle Vague

LizAnne Roman:

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” – The Beach Boys

“All I Could Do Was Cry” – Etta James

“If Ever I Would Leave You” – Robert Goulet

“Witchcraft” – Frank Sinatra

Sadie Guthrie:

“I’ll Be Your Mirror” – The Velvet Underground & Nico

Sarah Miller:

“I Want You, But I Don’t Need You” – Amanda Palmer

“Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” – Jeff Buckley

“You Ruined Everything” – Jonathan Coulton

“Volcano” (b-sides version) – Damien Rice

“When You Go Away” – The Weepies

Lauren Naturale:

“The Death of Ferdinand De Saussure” – The Magnetic Fields

“I Can Do Better Than That” – The Last 5 Years

“Come On Strong” – Lena Horne

“I Wish I Were In Love Again” – Audra McDonald

Arolyn Williams:

“Ne Me Quitte Pas” – Nina Simone

“Ain’t No Sunshine” – Bill Withers

Hallie Hunt:

“I’m Through With Love” – Diana Krall

“They Can’t Take That Away From Me” – Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald

Mari Aizawa:

“Sara Smile” – Daryl Hall & John Oates

“Protection” – Massive Attack

“Just the Way You Are” – Billy Joel

Lauren Gallagher:

“Saturday” – The Clientele

“I Will” – The Beatles

“Pictures of You” – The Cure

“Sleeping Beauty” (Act III: The Wedding) – P. I. Tchaikovsky

“Arpeggione Sonata” (2nd Movement) – Franz Schubert

Megan Wolney:

“Your Song” – Elton John

Dana Huber:

“This Is What We Mean When We Talk About Love” – My Friend the Chocolate Cake

Todd Lavoie:

“The Ship Song” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Tiffani Angus:

“Nails in My Feet” – Crowded House

Ken Schneyer:

“La Chanson des Vieux Amants” – Jacques Brel

Beverly Ma:

“The Look of Love” – Diana Krall

“This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)” – The Isley Brothers

“Always and Forever” – Heatwave

“Wishing On a Star” – Rose Royce

“Reasons” – Earth, Wind, & Fire

“Unchained Melody” – George Benson

“Never My Love” – The Association

“Cherish” – The Association

“Traces of Love” – Classics IV

Noam Rosen:

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” – The Platters

“Ballad of the Broken Seas” – Isobel Cambell & Mark Lanegan

“What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” – Jimmy Ruffin

Rebecca Howard:

“The Twelfth of Never” – Johnny Mathis

Kat Howard:

“The Last Beat of My Heart” – Devotchka

 

x. M

 

 

 

The Natural History of Our History

by Megan Kurashige

Back in the summer, we asked everyone to write out a list of things they liked and things they didn’t like. Carson’s list turned into an idiosyncratic solo. Mine was mostly absorbed by a fragile and quivering dance that we are working on with Josi.

The lists floated in the background of our brains. There are certain things that seem to carry more heft, tricky and revealing quirks that reveal secret histories or open the way for invention. It’s interesting to listen to someone itemize things that make them happy or make them unhappy, the small and ordinary things that, when examined, are discovered to be like icebergs and fossils. They loom deceptively large beneath the surface.

This is the first take of something that Sarah is going to read while Carson dances.

Likes and Dislikes, Take No. 1

Words by Carson, Josi, Kat, Megan, and Shannon. Reading by Sarah.

Things of Beauty

by Megan Kurashige

Shannon and I told each other that we wanted the next bit of dancing to be beautiful.

“Beautiful” is such a large and indistinct word. But there are certain stripes and flavors of it that are immediate, visceral, and absolute. You can look at something and know at once whether it is pleasing to your eye, whether you want to go on looking at it or listening to it, whether you feel better (fuller, lighter, happier, sadder…) for having experienced whatever it was.

Certain kinds of beauty are like eating certain kinds of food. You know, without having to think about it, that the taste is good. And then you think a little longer. You wonder about cilantro, peanut butter, chocolate. El Greco’s sky compared to Van Gough’s. Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.

Beauty really is a slippery subject.

I asked friends for the first piece of music that comes to mind when someone says “beautiful.” Here are some of their answers.

1. The first movement of Jacqueline Du Pre’s recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85.

2. “Undenied” by Portishead

3. “The Last Beat of My Heart” by DeVotchKa

4. “Lotus Blossom” by Billy Strayhorn, as played by Duke Ellington

5. “My Shining Hour,” as sung by Joan Leslie

6. “Blue Moon” by Big Star

7. Ella Fitzgerald singing “Misty”

I added Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 31, as played by Maurizio Pollini, and Schubert’s String Quintet in C.

 

How (some) Dances are (sometimes) Made

by Megan Kurashige

The process of making something is an odd business. You have an array of small, specific, ordinary items that, after varying amounts of work that are either dutiful or inspired, are transformed into something that is more complex, serviceable, or interesting. It’s a satisfyingly human magic, and the quirks of an individual’s choices are always of interest.

In terms of art and entertainment, the curiosity is even more pronounced. How do they make the pirate ship blow up? Do they write their novels with a pen in the morning? Do they compose in an empty room? Are there charms? Ritual? Habit? Here is this thing that did not exist before they told it to, and now, with any luck, it exists in your head as well as in the world.

Weird.

Last Saturday, Carson worked on developing a new phrase of movement. We’ve been investigating things that we like and things that we don’t like, and everyone has written down a very specific list. The original idea came from a line from Kat’s story: “The first thing you notice about being dead is that you can still see the stars.” I wanted to know what the first thing I would notice would be. Not the stars, probably. Something much more dull and unromantic.

We asked Carson to make up a set of gestures to go with the items on her list. Once she had her gestures, we asked her to expand them and link them together in a bigger, longer phrase. We left a camera running while she worked, and I edited down the 35 minutes of video to about seven minutes that I hope will give you an idea of what was happening without boring you to tears.

We’ve made other phrases in other ways. Sometimes Shan and I bring choreography that we’ve already worked out to rehearsal; sometimes we play around with balloons and cheap stockings. Sometimes we go to the wonderful haven of Borderlands Cafe and write notes on stories. But this is how we made this particular piece of dance. I hope you enjoy it!

 

The music in the video is from a couple of great sites, pdsounds and Free Music Archive. In order, the songs are:

“1 minute at the alexa mall in berlin” by Thore

“1909 Little Nemo Selection” by Victor Herbert Orchestra

“Mamma Roots Daddy” by Lax-o-mat/ CC BY-SA 3.0

“Prelude in E Flat Minor, BWV 853” by Carlos Gardels

What We’re Listening To No.1

by Shannon Kurashige

Project 1 does not have any hard and fast attachments to particular music yet…

However, we have generally been listening to the same playlist for the last few rehearsals.

Some dramatic:

Some beautiful:

Some silly:

It is interesting to look at music in a cinematic way. To watch movement in contrast or compliment with the music, and see different aspects highlighted or diminished.