On Monday we went to see the Chelsea Hotel’s own favorite composer Gerald Busby read as part of 
the Serial Underground series at the Cornelia Street Café. As always it was a relaxed evening of fine avant garde music and slightly quirky good company.
Composer’s Collaborative founder Jed Distler got the program rolling with a clever and humorous parody of how various composers, including Messiaen, would render the old standard “Happy Birthday.” One of the composers so parodied was actually in attendance, and a birthday boy himself!
One of the highlights of the evening was Judd Greenstein’s piece for solo viola, “Escape.” Nadia Sirota’s viola was eerie, then light and dancelike, brooding, then playful, as the piece built to an exciting interplay between the two themes, resolving into a frenzied finale. The piece was difficult to listen to at first, but it gradually pulled the listener in; it made a believer of me.
Gerald, with heart and practiced inflection, read a moving and funny story about a woman whose cat, Felix, falls off her terrace only to be adopted by a strange sort of trailer trash family with a painting of children being crucified on the wall. When the woman goes to collect Felix, the fat matriarch of the clan announces that they have changed the cat’s name to Jimmy, and that he seems to like it. It’s truly heartbreaking when Felix/Jimmy snuggles up to the fat woman as he’s never done with the original owner. The larger meaning of the story concerns loneliness. Maggie Paley, whose works include the novel Bad Manners and the nonfiction Book of the Penis is an excellent writer, deceptively plainspoken and without the need to rely on the usual writing school tricks, and manages to accomplish the nearly impossible in evoking empathy for even this rather grotesque family.
“New York Scenes,” a song cycle by Justine F. Chen, came next. These are just what they sound like: accounts of incidental encounters with archetypal New York characters. Chen said she composed the pieces with the baritone Giuseppe Spoletini, in mind, and it’s easy to see why she chose him: not only a fine singer, Spoletini is also an expressive actor. Best was his depiction of an irritable subway rider. Together with the fine pianist Edward Lorel, Spoletini carried us through the gamut of emotions, evoking in turn boredom, anxiety, frustration, anxiety, anger, defeat, and finally (momentary) triumph.
We were then treated to a rousing and funny cabaret number by Jed Distler, “A Brief History of Money” in which the narrator recounts the various indignities he has suffered in his quest to keep food on the table, including:
Broken into automatic Teller machines,
Sold junior highschool students amphetamines,
and played a dance class in queens.
Finally, Distler played a selection which he described as “Bach for hot tub users,” from his upcoming Meditate with the Masters CD. I liked the piece: smooth and catchy, it was certainly the easiest to appreciate. I guess that means I’m ready for the Hot Tub life. Where do they have those things? L.A.? Not at the Chelsea, that’s for sure. L.A. here I come. (Ed Hamilton)
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