Eric Schiller's Music Page

From Palestrina to Phish

I trained as a classical musician, playing flutes and saxophones when I was young, adding a variety of percussion later on. My mother's keyboard talent does not seem to have been passed on to me. Though I flirted with composition for a while, and might have continued had today's technology been available, I haven't written anything new in years.

When I was finishing up my undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago in 1975-76, music became a more important part of my life. I was music critic for the campus radio station, and hosted Culture Comment, an interview and review show. This game me the opportunity to go to a lot of concerts for free and meet fascinating musicians, from Rostropovich to Schikele. I also did a show devoted to mostly psychedelic music of the 1960's and 70's, and a show of avant garde serious works. This broad range of music still appeals to me today.

In 1976 I was working as a translator in Vienna, and noticed that there was a conducting course offered at the Hochschule fur musik und darstellende kunst. I figured that if I was going to return to my work as a critic in Chicago, I should learn something of the craft. I turned up with pencil and music paper for the the entrance exam. Everyone else turned up with batons and scores. I found out only on arrival that this was a practical course!

Somehow my rudimentary skills got me through the opening movement of Brahms' First and I was accepted into the course, though not as a full participant. Witold Rowicki was a fine teacher.I learned enough to suggest that I might want to take this more seriously, and one afternoon in the Wienerwald, after a visit to the Arnold Schoenberg museum, I decided that I wanted to try to become a conductor.

The next 5 years saw me attend almost every rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic, which I considered a great learning experience. I studied with Laszlo Halasz, Harry Levine, and especially Charled Bruck at the Domaine School for Conductors in Hancock, Maine. I assembled the Long Island Sound Ensemble and gave concerts in the New York area, including American premiere's of works by David Bedford and Peter Maxwell Davies.

But then Ronald Reagan came along, and a cultural path of destruction laid waste to the musical infrastructure of our country. When he eliminated the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, a hundred orchestras lost their funding and an equal number of experienced conductors were hurled into the market. The writing was on the wall, and illiteracy was not one of my problems. In such an atmosphere I was simply not good enough to earn one of the few remaining jobs, and I returned to a combination of chess and academia, earning my Ph.D. in Linguistics while performing only at the famous St. Cecilia's Day parties hosted by Jim McCawley.

Over the past 20 years I have attended fewer and fewer classical concerts, but have attended more concerts in a different tradition. I was tired of audiences who didn't give a damn about the music, and of regurgitating horrible second-rate music that was populating the airwaves. IMHO there is a lot of music which should remain buried, insignificant flotsam and jetsam whose only merit is that it has a recognizable melody somewhere. Faced with endless broadcasts of the complete works of Hummel, Faure, Liszt, I started to return to some of the musicians of our time who had impressed me: Ravi Shankar, John McLaughlin, and the fabulous Blues and Jazz of Chicago.

In 1991, 20 years after I heard them at the long-defunct Fillmore East, I went to another Grateful Dead concert and discovered the spontaneous, improvisatory genius that made live concerts worth the price of admission. Since then I have attended a lot more of their concerts, especially after moving to the San Francisco area in 1993. I have rediscovered some of the vibrant artists of my youth, such as Richie Havens, and explored new genres of music. With the death of Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead are no more, but the remaining members of the band continue to make interesting music and hopefully will continue to do so. Locally, cover bands such as the Jerry's Kids and the Webs continue to remind us of the legacy of great songs the team of Garcia & Hunter have penned over the years. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I greatly enjoy the rare performance Vince Welnick and the Missing Man Formation. The Steve Kimock Band (under whatever name or lineup they happen to be using) is a promising new band.

One of my favorite bands  is Phish, who also combine enormous musical talent with improvisation and tremendous imagination. My first experience at one of their concerts left an indelible impression for a number of reasons, which you can view in A Phish Story.

I remain open to new musical experiences, and with the arrival of Michael Tilson Thomas at the San Francisco Symphony, which was once under the leadership of my distant relative and strong inspiration, Pierre Monteux. In a fortunate coincidence, surviving members of the Grateful Dead appeared with Tilson Thomas and the symphony in June of 1996.

In 1998, my three favorite shows were: The debut of  The Other Ones (Rainforest Benefit, debut, June), Bridge School Benefit (October), Cryptical Envelopment (NYE).

Here is a photo of Doris and Pierre Monteux, taken in Perugia, Italy, in 1956, and inscribed to my maternal grandmother Frances Levine. It looks best in high-res, so please be patient while it loads.

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