The Brooklyn Rail

Of all the orchestral instruments, the cello may be the most lovable. There is something about its declarative alto voice that stirs and soothes. The violin often gets top billing, the piano encompasses all with its great range, but the cello unfailingly speaks to us. Over time, we tend to regard the premiere cellists—Pablo Casals, Mstislav Rostropovich, Yo-Yo Ma—as intimates, musicians who access and articulate most fully the depth of our emotional lives.

But it’s not always that way. Some musicians and composers have found uses for the cello that extend far beyond that warm style of expression. Over the course of his long career, Erik Friedlander has employed the cello to tell stories that are as often discordant as they are sympathetic. From his long association with John Zorn through numerous solo and band recordings, especially with his groups Chimera and Topaz, he has dramatically expanded the personality of his instrument. In recent years, he also created a number of film scores, several of them tending toward the horror genre, with cello used to suitably unnerving effect.

Last year’s recording Dirty Boxing (Skipstone Records) grew out of an especially unlikely source, his fascination and engagement with the world of mixed martial arts. The titles of the individual tracks—“Foot Stomp,” “Ground & Pound,” and “Submission” among them—reference techniques from the sport for vanquishing an opponent. The compositions hop and skip with nimble grace, and his technique follows suit, moving from elegant bowing to frequent uses of pizzicato. Yet the compositions are hardly punishing; they challenge us with odd time signatures and sudden movements into new territory, but always return to an engagement with the listener that is spry and invigorating.

In early October, Friedlander will play a week of shows at the Stone, performing with a broad cross-section of his associates, including vocalist Sara Serpa, pianist Uri Caine, bassist Mark Helias, and drummer Satoshi Takeishi, among others. Like most of the performances at this indispensable venue (even in its more recent academic setting at the New School), it is sure to make for adventurous listening.

It's a long way from the Stone to the newly eviscerated John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, under the artistic leadership of Donald Trump. What is happening to this once-august institution is nothing less than a national disgrace. The president has gone from refusing to attend the Kennedy Center Honors, which were originally intended to pay tribute to artistic greatness, to cancelling them altogether, and now to abasing everything they once stood for. In outlining his selection process for this year’s awards, Trump pulled out his all-purpose put-down, saying many who were under consideration had to be turned away because “they were too woke.” You can’t help but wonder if past honorees such as Leonard Bernstein, Ella Fitzgerald, and Stevie Wonder would have been lumped into that category.

Instead, among the honorees this year we get the mumbling jingoism of Sylvester Stallone, the mid-range pablum of Michael Crawford, and the topper, the empty theatrics and very limited musicianship of KISS. Trump lauds these lesser talents by citing their boffo-box-office appeal and the fact that they are loved by millions (and, just as important, tolerant of his wish to honor them). That may seem to be the height of populist thinking—if crowds adore individuals or groups, let’s celebrate them accordingly—but all it does is distort the meaning of this honor. Because it isn’t necessarily our most popular entertainers who deserve to be enshrined in the pantheon. Nor, conversely, is it our most obscure.

Measuring creative endeavors by how many units they sell tells us next to nothing about their true worth. They need to meet a different standard, one that doesn’t have to do with false woke/unwoke and specious popular/unpopular dichotomies. As difficult or problematic as it may be to agree on, this standard has to go back to some fundamental measure of quality. Without it, we’re lost in a wilderness of junk.

It's interesting to note that the question of quality—what does it mean, how is it applied—used to be raised more regularly by liberals than conservatives. Many were uncomfortable with the idea of critics holding sway over what belongs in the pantheon of greatness, given the inevitable personal biases of individuals, as well as the encoding of class values in these judgements. Besides, do artworks really have independent qualities, or are those just derived from the received opinion and performative posturing of the critics evaluating them? This sort of questioning was instrumental in enlarging the canon, but it should not become a fundamental aspect of destroying it altogether.

The best way for art to foster connection is not to pander to us, but to uplift us. I remember interviewing the former longtime director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello, at a time when public debates were causing people to rethink notions of quality. He staked out the alternate position, arguing that the enshrining of greatness was a museum’s job, and that it could never be accomplished through popularity contests or political agendas. When you ascend the steps of the Met, he said, you’re literally and figuratively stepping up; you’re entering a pantheon, and should be suitably humbled by it. This isn’t to say notions of quality, or tastes, don’t change over time, because they do. But when we label something as worthy of attention, even contemplation, we are making an unavoidable statement about our values. We can’t back off from this responsibility, and need to embrace it. It helps define who we are.

The way we’re defining our national values now, though, is troubling. Complex problems are being dumbed down to triumphalist maxims. Cheap theatricality rules. This points to a fundamental problem with democracy itself, one that goes back at least as far as Plato. How effective can this form of government be when it relies on the will, and often whim, of the people? The answer is made manifest in the prediction of the great satirical essayist H.L. Mencken: “As democracy is perfected,” he wrote, “the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Over-simplifying our political outlook blocks out the realities we may not want to see, just as over-simplifying our cultural outlook blinds us to the world at large. Again, this is not to say that difficult and demanding art is the answer. Simple and direct work holds an important place, and can be strikingly effective. But viewed as a whole, what is produced creatively needs to mirror a complex, diverse world, because that is the world we live in. When an artist like Friedlander goes out on a limb and alters what we already know, enlarging our understanding of what is possible, we all stand to become the beneficiaries of that endeavor. Bread and circuses will never nourish our spirit. We need to demand more.