DECONSTRUCTING THE BEATLES

Cleveland Museum of Art

January 5 & 6

Offering sophisticated analysis in an accessible format.

Thirty-three years after they broke up, the Beatles hold a place in popular culture like no other band – rock, pop, classical, and everything in between. Beyond the standards they added to the musical repertoire and sales records that remain unbroken and enduring technical innovations, the Beatles embody the spirit of the Sixties, an era when old restrictions and boundaries were swept away in an exhilarating wave of openness, experimentation and fresh ideas that still resonate today.

What’s been lost in the intervening years is the artifice behind the art; that is, the breadth and depth of the Beatles’ oeuvre, the influences that informed their music, the intelligence that shaped it, and the enormous work that went into creating a seemingly straightforward, three-and-a-half minute song. Which is where Scott Freiman comes in.

A soundtrack composer for film and television who also runs his own recording studio, Freiman has developed a series of lectures called “Deconstructing the Beatles” in which he takes a detailed look at the group’s creative efforts. After talks on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beatles (aka The White Album) drew big crowds at the Cleveland Museum of Art last year, Freiman was invited back for three presentations this past weekend that focused on the band’s early years and the incredibly productive period in 1966 and 1967 that produced Revolver and seminal works like “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “A Day in the Life.”

For aficionados, there is not much new in Freiman’s talks. Many books have recounted the Beatles’ history, music and recording sessions. What’s compelling about Freiman is the way he splices together sound, visuals and a running patter of commentary and explanation filtered through a geeky but accessible engineer’s sensibilities to show how songs were created in the studio, often starting with a simple demo. This is the best part of his presentations: rare demos and early takes demonstrating how an idea that began with one or two chords and a few rough lyrics on a home recorder could blossom into a masterpiece like “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

Freiman also does a great job of putting the music in context. He tosses off endless references – some specific, like Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho strings showing up in “Eleanor Rigby,” and some speculative, like the television “Batman” theme possibly inspiring some of the vocals in “Taxman.” He draws in many of the Beatles’ contemporaries, like Brian Wilson, David Crosby and Mick Jagger, and elucidates the influences of avant-garde composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar. He sets the scene in swinging London and follows John Lennon into the Indica bookstore, where Lennon discovers Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience and the lines “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream...”

Not surprisingly, the central figure in all this is George Martin, the EMI producer who made many of the Beatles’ aural dreams come true. With the help of engineer Geoff Emerick, Martin was willing to work with the band at a time when no one else would accommodate their demands for pushing boundaries. Slowing down or speeding up tracks, adding tape loops, running drum or guitar solos backwards – none of it was too weird for Martin. He could write a string octet arrangement for “Eleanor Rigby” as skillfully as he could expand four recording tracks to eight or even 12, or push Lennon’s voice through a Leslie speaker to get a never-heard effect. Freiman also did a great job recounting Martin’s use of a 40-piece classical orchestra on “A Day in the Life,” which Martin multiplied by five in the final mix to get that ominous, frenetic sound.

Freiman’s attention to detail is such that even the warm-up music playing as the crowd filters into the auditorium helps set the proper mood. For Sunday’s “Trip Through Strawberry Fields,” the selections included prime psychedelia like “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” “Psychotic Reaction” and “2,000 Light Years From Home.”

Space precludes more than this brief recap of a wealth of stories and information – and the sheer joy of watching the promo videos for “Strawberry Fields,” “Rain,” and other songs that changed the course of pop music. Freiman did a brilliant job deconstructing them. But as the capacity crowds at the museum again this year demonstrated, their enduring appeal remains beyond mere words to capture or explain.

For more on Scott Freiman: http://beatleslectures.com

And the official Beatles website: http://www.thebeatles.com

ARS FUTURA

Cleveland Museum of Art

January 2

Modern music amid historic masterpieces.

Cleveland’s newest contemporary music ensemble drew a capacity crowd to the Art Museum last Wednesday for a performance in the European “Naturalism and Idealism” gallery. As it happens, that title also provides a good capsule description of the concert – a group of natural talents aiming high with a mostly 20th-century program that produced results a bit more uneven than the masterworks surrounding them.

The ensemble, which features student players from the Cleveland Institute of Music, is led by Shuhai Wang, an accomplished pianist and faculty member at CIM. She is also the director of Classical Revolution Cleveland, the outreach effort to put classical music in unorthodox venues that has been such a wild success at the Happy Dog tavern, where it gave birth to a recording project.

Wang took a back seat at this performance, giving her young charges most of the limelight. Flutist Madeline Lucas opened the program with two solo works: a brief flight of fancy by Katherine Hoover, and Arthur Honegger’s charming Danse de la Chèvre, which offers some technical challenges. Lucas played with spirit and energy, though there was not much definition in her sound, which would have benefited from sharper development.

Guitarist Krystin O’Mara showed rock star technique on a trio of short pieces by Joaquín Rodrigo. Though her fingerwork was dazzling, O’Mara seems not to have much performing experience. She was focused on the fretboard to the point of ignoring the audience, and fell apart at the end of the concluding “Zapateado,” finishing short of the actual ending with a quick flourish of slides. Still, her raw talent is unmistakable.

Harpist Shelly Du provided the best pure sound of the evening with mesmerizing renditions of a Bach fugue and Listz’s Le Rossignol, S.250/1. Neither piece was written for harp, but they both sounded superb in the gallery space, which gave the instrument a rich, deep resonance. And Du is a very good player, creating sounds in the Liszt work that sounded identical to piano keys. Hers was the only performance of the set that stopped all the bustle and noise on the edges of the room, as even passers-by were transfixed by the sound of her playing.

A duet by violinist Emily Cornelius and cellist Carlo Javier showcased the group’s weaknesses and strengths. The caliber of their playing on the first movement of Honegger’s Sonatine for Violin and Cello was quite good, capturing the changing tempos and moods with professional precision. But there wasn’t much depth to their performance. That usually comes with time, so it will be interesting to hear what Cornelius and Javier can do after they’ve played together for a while.

That was also true of the final work, Jacques Ibert’s Deux Interludes, performed by Cornelius, Lucas, and Wang on harpsichord. After a first movement that didn’t quite gel, the second movement picked up feeling and energy and blossomed into the most impassioned segment of the evening. As a preview of Ars Futura’s potential, it was a thrilling moment. And it was great fun to hear Wang providing a backbeat on harpsichord. She showed the same mastery of technique on two solo Martinů pieces preceding the trio, which offered the rare treat of hearing 20th-century chords and ideas played on a Baroque instrument.

Flaws aside, this was a lovely concert. Ars Futura may be in its infancy, but the caliber of the players, the intelligence of their program, and the liveliness of their performance suggest great things to come. And the power of performing amid the angels and saints and painters like Cavallino, Reni and Caravaggio can hardly be underestimated. Great art elevates everything in its proximity, and as CMA’s Music in the Galleries series continues to demonstrate, the synergy created by combining art and music can be sublime.

For more on Ars Futura and their CMA concert: https://www.facebook.com/arsfuturaensemble

For more on Music in the Galleries: http://www.clevelandart.org/events/music-and-performances/music-galleries

Photo: Greg Donley/Cleveland Museum of Art