WRITING WHILE HEARING ZOO

I have much to say about my hero Michael Nyman. One of the first things I loved about his music when I secumbed to it in 1993 was the spirit, the energy and realism which captured the essence of London. One feels like one is in a taxi rushing through the busy streets at night, turning the corners rapidly and having to make an abrupt stop underneath the lights of Charring Cross. So since then, since collecting vast amounts of his music, listening to it, devouring it, relishing it, savoring it, developing a taste for his more avant-garde: The Kiss, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Time will Pronounce, Aspects of Beauty, etc. While my love affair with Nyman has progressed, in certain bodies of his work I have acquired a “Coplandesque” essence to much of his music, visions of the Amarican frontier, and being an American and an Anglophile, I do not like it. I know much of Nyman’s inspirations: the baroque, early music, visual art, cinema, eastern music, history, etc., yet I have never heard the word Copland mentioned in all of my readings, and since that aesthetic has developed in my psyche, tarnishing even the most avant-garde works and I cannot loose it and it is very frustrating. So I want to discover Nyman’s true aesthetic, possibly that which I heard when I first encountered it in London. Now, after years of listening, I seek to reassess my Nyman aesthetic and readjust my thinking so I may enjoy his music as I once did and have a cab ride through the east end while in Provo Utah. So I present to myself a continuum from the very “Coplandesque" The Claim, to the less “Coplandesque" in order: Ravenous; Double Concerto for sax and cello; Gattica; The Suit and the Photograph; Libertine; Time will Pronounce; Drowning; Draughsmands contract; Carrington; Piano, End of the Affair; and even less the experimental and often cocophanic works such as ZOO, Caprices; The CTHWAHL; Noises, sounds; The Kiss; The Man and the Hat; Noises Sounds Prospero's Books; and finally Wonderland. It is with Wonderland that I find my way back to Nyman, his aesthetic that has led to a 15 year obsession. I wander the streets of Soho in Wonderland from my bed. I still hear Copland, but this essence evokes thoughts of landscape, “frontiers" Nyman is exploring just as Copland did, but not necessarily the American. This expanse, the landscape, is London, the untamed city, cocophany of the crossroads of the world: the wealthy and the poor, the mania and the calm, the individual and the masses, the storm and the quiet, the despair and the frenzy of boisterousness, the underground and the double decker, the to and fro, the coming and going, the jubilation and degradation, the poor and the rich, the benefactor and the bitch, the townies and the fashionistas. Charing Cross, Islignton, Angel, Holliway Road, Turnpike lane, Bank, Tower Bridge, Tottenham Court Road, (especially Tottenham court Road where I discovered Nyman), Leichester Square, Tuffnel Park, etc……………………………………….Scape, scope, landscape of London………the physical and the sublime, but wherever Nyman goes the landscape goes. And I will follow in my cab of dreams. London is so far away, but still within accesible as I play the Water Dances.