Hasta La Gadget!

If you hear me talking today with a heavier accent than usual, the explanation is simple: I’m back from a trip to Russia and still fighting the jetlag. I was travelling with a very interesting group of people — faithful and adventurous supporters of KCRW. We began our trip in St. Petersburg and then proceeded to Moscow. So let me start with St. Petersburg, the city where I was born and lived until 1977.

This was my third trip back home since then, and I was very pleased to find the city in much better shape compared to what I’ve seen in the past. The city was jammed with tourists eager to experience the so-called White Nights — the several weeks in June and July when daylight lasts almost until midnight.

We stayed in a hotel walking distance from the famous Bronze Horseman, the monument to Peter the Great. It was created by French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet and commissioned by Catherine the Great. For the last two centuries the sculpture has been the symbol of the city. Looking at its gigantic granite pedestal, one can’t help thinking about <Levitated Mass by Michael Heizer here at LACMA, where it was laboriously delivered along a 106-mile route that lasted 11 days. Just imagine the effort it took in the 18th century to drag The Bronze Horseman‘s gigantic granite pedestal, which is at least three times bigger than Levitated Mass.

The Hermitage Museum with its numerous buildings, including the Winter Palace of the Russian Tsars, is celebrated for its encyclopedic collection, stretching from ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman art to the Italian Renaissance with paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, and a sculpture by Michelangelo. And then there are more than two dozen paintings by Rembrandt, including The Return of the Prodigal Son, completed a few months before the artist’s death in 1669. My absolutely favorite painting in the entire museum.

There has been a dramatic change in the presentation of the late 19th/early 20th century French art. I remember it was displayed in relatively small rooms on the top floor of the Winter Palace. Now it’s moved across the Palace Square to the former General Staff Building where Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, along with iconic early works by Matisse and Picasso, are exhibited to a spellbinding effect.

On the must-see list for any visitor to St. Petersburg is the Mariinsky Kirov Opera/Ballet Theater. And that’s where we went to see — what else but Swan Lake, still delivering its magic a hundred plus years after its original production on this very stage.

In the next few days, I hope to share with you a special photo album with hundreds of photos I shot both in St. Petersburg and Moscow. But today’s program I want to end with just two photos. The first is the interior of the 19th century Church of Spilled Blood, built on the spot where the Russian Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. We were invited to attend a special performance of liturgical music by the choir, and it was undeniably one of the most moving experiences of our trip to Russia. `

And the last photo is of the majestic Peterhof Park built for Peter the Great by Le Nôtre — the same architect who designed Versailles for Louis XIV. It’s up to you to decide which of these two Imperial fantasies is more glamorous.

To learn about Edward’s Fine Art of Art Collecting Classes, please visit his website. You can also read The New York Times article about his classes here, or an Artillery Magazine article about Edward and his classes here.

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Edward Goldman is an art critic and the host of Art Talk, a program on art and culture for NPR affiliate KCRW 89.9 FM. To listen to the complete show and hear Edward’s charming Russian accent, click here.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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“Go wrong strong.” ~ Miles Davis

“New ears for new music.” ~ Nietzsche

For the last 50 years, a seminal part of Western popular music has been the guitar solo.

What makes an epic guitar solo and how does it interact with and add to a song?

As a psychotherapist, my theory regarding popular music in general and guitar solos in particular is that they allow us to feel and express (cathartically) a wider range of emotions than we are allowed to feel or express in society. Rock concerts are our society’s condoned way of blowing off steam.

I look at guitar solos the same way I look at magic tricks and jokes: there are set-ups that lead the audience in one direction and then the magician or comedian goes someplace unexpected. Amusement is your brain’s way of reconciling your expectation with reality.

Here’s a visual analogy: there was a brilliant meme going around last year that read, “There’s a time and place for decaf coffee! (Never and in the trash.)” This is funny because when you hear the set-up: “There’s a time and a place for decaf coffee!” your mind scans through times (10pm? after lunch? after dinner?) and places (at the beach? at your favorite cafe? in bed?) but doesn’t think “never” is included under the rubric of “times” and “trash” is a place to enjoy something (because it isn’t).

This is how guitar solos work too: there are lyrical phrases, emotional builds with soaring riffs then releases, apparent calls and responses, and also some intellectual components – phrases that are unique, maybe nostalgic, or possibly even “wrong” (but not too wrong) – phrases that are titillating because they are somewhat transgressive – notes that do not immediately make sense intellectually like playing the major 3rd over a minor vamp.

Lists of greatest guitar solos of all time are filled with highly-emotional – I daresay “screaming” – solos of guitar heroes such as Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, David Gilmore, Carlos Santana, Eddie Van Halen, Brad Gillis, Slash, Randy Rhodes, Stevie Ray Vaughan, et al. And there’s also a lineage of more intellectual players starting with Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery and carried on by George Benson, John Scofield, Pat Methany, Bill Fissell, Yngwie Malmsteen, Guthrie Govan, Steve Vai, Mike Stern, Biréli Lagrène, Joe Satriani, Allan Holdsworth, John Mclaughlin, Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Al DiMeola, Larry Coryell, Dweezil Zappa, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson and others.

And then there are outliers such as Adrian Belew, Alex Lifeson, Mark Ribot, Andy Summers and Tom Morello who are difficult to categorize.

And then there is Michael Schenker.

For me, Michael Schenker is something like “The Blair Witch Project” of guitarists.

For the last 35 years Michael Schenker’s solo on “Rock Bottom” from U.F.O.’s 1978 album “Phenomenon” was outside of the scope of my guitar playing. Although my mind quickly recognized the solo as beautifully phrased, I literally needed new ears to “hear” many of the notes in it because I could not reconcile them within the key of E minor. And then I stumbled upon Danny Gill’s two videos of the solo in Lick Library and it opened up a whole new world of musical poetry to me:

So that’s Danny impeccably replicating the brief symphony composed by Michael Schenker.

And below is the slow version that allowed me to see and hear all of the notes from the dorian scale and see all of the odd bends and trills for the first time.

After learning the solo I decided to research U.F.O. and how “Phenomenon” and “Rock Bottom” were recorded. Besides one or two British documentaries on youtube and a few interviews with Schenker and vocalist/lyricist Phil Mogg, not much is known about this solo besides Schenker was 18, didn’t speak much English, and the main riff seemed to occur out of thin air one day in the studio.

But watching Danny Gill play it both fast and slow above, the solo sounds like a song in itself – doesn’t it?

In particular, there’s a major 3rd used as a passing tone in the opening riff and then Schenker hovers around the 9th (F#) and the 6th (C#) of the dorian scale. I asked Danny if he thought Schenker made a conscious choice to play around the dorian scale and Danny told me, “Schenker could definitely hear the notes of the scale. I don’t know whether he could intellectualize and explain the theory behind the notes but that’s besides the point. He plays passionately and fearlessly; each improvised note sounds worked out because his ears are so musical that they guide him through this epic solo. He was definitely in ‘The Zone.'”

I mentioned Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk to Danny and asked if he thought the 18 year old Schenker could have been channeling – if knowing the “rules” might have actually hindered Schenker in some way.

Danny finished by saying, “There is a great Billy Sheehan quote that is plastered on the walls of Musicians Institute where I went to school: ‘You need to know the rules in order to break them.’ I have tried to live by this creed during my own musical journey but wouldn’t it be amazing if you could just know the rules instinctually… and then when to transgress them and explore new territory? Knowing some musical theory can create a safe zone for a player. The downside is that safe can equal boring. There is also the question of musical style: jazz accepts ‘outside’ notes in a way that pop music doesn’t. Blues is very emotional with alot of note bending designed to emulate the cry of a vocalist. And a great rock guitar solo is a perfect storm of blues emotion, classical melodic sensibility, and jazz risk taking.“

Big thanks to Danny Gill for giving me new ears for new music!!!

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