Threads - Greg Lake and Pictures at an Exhibition
Today I learned of the passing of Greg Lake, who, as a performer and songwriter as part of the 70s progressive rock group Emerson Lake & Palmer (ELP), occupied my listening time and handed me a thread that has woven curiosity, creativity and wonder into my life ever since. Today, I celebrate his contributions to my life.
Long ago, I recognized a happy pattern in my life-long learning path which I saw as threads of curiosity that I picked up and carried on weaving through my life, creating a structure of complexity, creativity and beauty. ELP and their rock interpretation of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" was one of those threads that led me to deeper knowledge of, and appreciation for, classical music, Russian folklore and literature, which led further into medieval iconography, a love of live musical performance, and singer/songwriting in general. Each of these interests, in turn, led me to carry the threads further into other areas of music. art, history, culture and life, for which I am very grateful.
I played my ELP "Pictures" album endlessly as a teenager and young adult. I was fascinated by the contrasting and dramatic personalities of each movement. There were no lyrics, so the instruments were the background music to many half-hearted homework nights and days of reluctant, desultory room-cleanings. From the quiet invitation of the first movement, "Promenade," through the oddly dark, horned wobbling of "The Gnome," to the final victorious crescendo of Carl Palmer's percussion on "The Great Gates of Kiev," in my imagination I was right there, in the gallery, looking at those pictures and seeing through them to the old Russian folktales they painted in my imagination.
That album occupied my mind so much that I purchased a recording of a symphonic performance of Mussorgsky's original composition and listened to that with equal, if not greater, fervor. I discovered additional movements which ELP did not include in their interpretation and found myself captivated by even greater contrasts and nuance in the pictures conjured by my imagination as I listened. Near the end of that decade, when unexpectedly called to perform anything on-stage before an audience of about a hundred friends, I chose to perform a fully-committed enactment of "Battle of the Unhatched Chicks" accompanied by Mussorgsky's music, obviously puzzling and possibly horrifying many, and surely reinforcing my "weird" identify factor. The next time I was afforded the same opportunity, I enthusiastically lip-synched to Wham's "Wake Me Up (Before You Go-Go)" redeeming myself before the same audience for something comprehensible and relatable, if not particularly inspired. I still prefer the first daring and personal, although not understood, performance. I rocked myself right out of that shell.
I was very fortunate to attend a performance of the marvelous Cleveland Symphony led by Conductor Loren Maazel of Maurice Ravel's orchestration of "Pictures" in Spokane, Washington in the early 80s. I can remember what I wore (black), who I was with (my ex), how other people looked (fancy) and every piece of music on the program that night (Verdi's La Forza del Destino). It was my first time ever going to a classical music concert and, thanks to my familiarity with, and love for, that piece of music, it is still my most memorable. I took great pride in knowing not to clap between movements, a state of mind that remains with me still whenever I attend classical music concerts.
That evening, and all that led up to it, formed a strong thread that I wove as I continued listening to, and learning about, classical music, music composition and theory. I still have a lot to learn there; repeated exposures to music theory still have me feeling like I still 'don't get it'. One of these days, when my hand and wrist recover from an open-fracture which occurred in a roller-skating accident, I'll take up an instrument and learn hands-on, rather than just theoretically. (Ha, the phrase 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture" just popped into my head. Typing about hand injury is just painful.)
My curiosity about Ravel's arrangement of "Pictures," along with the fascination I had with Ravel that began when I saw a movie in a high school Film Appreciation class about the rehearsals and performance of "Bolero" led me to pick up the thread and explore Ravel as a composer and learn how his creativity through decades shaped, and was shaped by, history and other art forms. And that led to an entire thread into French Impressionist painters and French culture, an interest formed my Freshman year of high school when I took French from Miss Serafimidis/Ms. Thompson, a brilliant teacher capable of inspiring lasting passions in all her students.
So yeah, Greg Lake was a famous 70s rock guitarist and singer. And Wednesday, December 6, 2016 was his last day among the living here on Earth. But, his inspiration, passion, vision and work have formed warp and weft of some of the most interesting, meaningful and enjoyable parts of my imaginary an actual life. To quote his own songs "Oh, what a Lucky Man he was! C'est la vie."
