Review: The World Is A Curious Place To Live - Lori Henriques

Who are the inheritors of the edutational mantle passed on from Schoolhouse Rock ?  While the crunchy pop purveyors of, say, the Bazillions have distilled a handful of lessons into 3-minute songs whose chord structures and arrangements would fit on any AAA radio station, who took the less-poppy and more obscure route that some of those songs from 40 years ago took?

Lori Henriques, that's who. 

Her 2011 kids music debut, Outside My Door , was one of those "unlike any other CD" CDs for which the phrase actually fit.  A mixture of 1970s piano jazz, Broadway exposition, Sesame Street , and, yes, Schoolhouse Rock , the album eschewed pop-rock for jazzy explorations of birthdays, twins, and more subjects of kid-concern.  It was smart without being snooty (yes, she rhymed "goat turd" with "awkward").

On her new disk, The World Is A Curious Place To Live, the Portland, Oregon-based Henriques even more fully embraces her inner Schoolhouse Rock  nerd.  From the album title, which isn't so much descriptive as it is sage advice, to the songs within, which deal with topics scientific, mathematic, and linguistic.  In fact, the 35-minute album can even be thought of as 3 separate and sequential EPs on each of Henriques' obsessions.

The first EP, featuring the most scientific songs, includes the album's strongest songs.  With its celebration of curious people both famous and close to Henriques' orbit, the opener "Curiosity" features a bouncing chord accompaniment and her evident delight in the wordplay. (For good measure, Henriques throws in a scat line or two.)  On songs like "Crunchy Privilege," you can hear why she cites Cole Porter as an influence.  And while Henriques having fun moving her fingers quickly to match the lyrics, the two strongest tracks on the album are "When I Look Into the Night Sky" and "Dinosaur," two  ballads.  The former, an ode to wonder and amazement, is based on "Saint James Infirmary" and has a lovely video to match.  The latter is wholly original, simultaneously an honest-to-goodness love song for a dinosaur and a wry recounting of millions of years of evolution ("We've still got the ants / And they're still crawling round on our floor").  I can't see this playing on too many radio stations, but it so totally nails that combination of earnestness and nerdiness that's one of kindie's most appealing strains.

The other two EPs-of-a-sort are fun, but don't quite reach the heights of the preceding songs.  The counting songs are brief and for the most part meld familiar classical melodies with skip-counting lyrics for numbers 2 through 6 ("Counting by Six is Sublime" to me works best).  The language songs include a Norwegian travelogue ("When in Norway") and, appropriately for Henriques, a wordsmith at heart, a celebratory ode to words themselves ("Vocabulary").

As on her debut, the only accompaniment is Henriques' piano, which she nimbly plays.  The age range may differ by section -- older kids probably won't find the number songs as interesting as the language and science ones -- but there's a sweet spot between the ages of 5 through 9.  Henriques has joined Justin Roberts and decided not to have her latest album streamed on Spotify, but you can stream samples on iTunes.  And, as with her debut, the album packaging from her brother Joel Henriques is lovely.

I think the thing I love most about The World Is A Curious Place To Live  is that Lori Henriques clearly practices what she sings, offering up celebrations of the world outside of ourselves.  Her jazzy-pop-by-way-of-Broadway-and-Carnegie-Hall is still unique in the world of kids music and worth being curious about.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review. 

Interview: Richard Perlmutter (Beethoven's Wig)

I sometimes wonder if Richard Perlmutter, the musician and producer behind the wildly successful classical-music-by-way-of-"Weird-Al"-Yankovic series Beethoven's Wig, gets the same type of "are you Hootie" questions that Darius Rucker, lead singer for Hootie and the Blowfish, gets.  He's not literally Beethoven (or his wig), but no Perlmutter, no Beethoven's Wig.

He released the delightful Beethoven's Wig: Sing Along Piano Classics last year and has been spending an increasing amount of time taking the Beethoven's Wig concept to live audiences.  We chatted by phone recently and in our interview below we talk about the origins of the series, learning to enjoy performances, and whether or not there's a crisis in classical music.

Zooglobble: What are your first musical memories?

Richard Perlmutter: Sitting around, listening to the radio in the '50s -- I remember that Frankie Acalon song, "Venus."... I also remember performing in third grade, in a pretty primitive school talent show.

I built my own guitar, then spent $13 for a Harmony guitar.

Was there lots of music in the household?

Our family was not really musical.  My parents paid for some guitar lessons, but after that it was my doing.

How did Beethoven's Wig come about?

I had done a couple other albums on my own, produced some other albums, written for TV shows, wrote jingles -- lots of stuff was comedic.  My strength is as a lyricist.  I liked classical music and been thinking about doing something with it.  I always tell the Beethoven's Wig "story," which is that I had thought of the phrase "Beethoven's wig... is very big" sung to the start of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.  At first, I didn't know how it would all sound, how it would be received.

Were you surprised by the initial success of the first album?

I had an inkling -- a friend heard a couple songs I had done as a demo, and thought it was a cool concept.  So I finished the album and got a record contract for it.  Within a week after it came out, it was on NPR, at the top of the charts on Amazon, I was invited to be on the Today show.

Everything was new.  No musician plans for success -- it happens, then you deal with it.  Fortunately, it happened when I was a little bit older.  It was nice, but I didn't feel like a rock star.

What comes first, the melody or the lyric -- or, put another way, do you have a germ of an idea and expand on it, or do you assign yourself a song, and work on putting lyrics to that?

The first.  The last three albums I've done had a loose concept -- instruments, dance, piano -- which have let me explore different themes or genres in classical music.  I really like to explore things.  As I explore, some ideas settle in more and are a better fit for lyrics.  My last album [Sing Along Piano Classics], some selections were popular, others (like Schoenberg or Stravinsky) aren't "hits."

Were you intentionally ranging through a long time period?

Yes, I was.  To pick a Stravinsky piece, for example, I listened to a lot of different songs.  I actually played as a writer.  I sort of felt like a singer-songwriter.

Which do you enjoy more -- recording or performing?  The project started out as an album, but you seem to be making more concert appearances.

You've noticed I've amped up the touring over the past year.  My first instrument is classical guitar, then mandolin.  I didn't take classical piano 'til after the first Beethoven's Wig album, but thought it would be good for me to do so.  My classical piano teacher said it would be good to play onstage.

Doing that gives me more opportunities.  Bringing in five singers and an orchestra is a hard sell in this economy.  Lately I've been hired to perform solo, then maybe I'll bring in local singers.

I've got a lot of curiosity, ambition -- not commercial ambition, but personal goals.  To sustain yourself, most people in music are trying new things.

It seems like there's a lot of hand-wringing about a crisis in classical music.  What's your prescription for solving the crisis -- or is there even a crisis at all?

I don't think about it that much but I also don't think there's that much of a crisis.  Maybe for large symphonic performances -- economically there may be some problems, some are doing well, some are not.  Many that are playing repertoire are now doing new things.

Audiences for every kind of music have become smaller.  You have to find your audience.  Someone recently said something along the lines of, and I'm paraphrasing, "There used to be millions of fans for a few artists, and now that's reversed."  The idea of having gigantic audiences is old.  I've been thinking a bit about a Beethoven's Wig TV show, but what does that look like in this age?  You've got Mr. Rogers, but he was one of a few people.

I'm not that worried.  Trying to save classical music, that's not my job.  Beethoven, Bach -- they're like Shakespeare and Chaucer.  As long as humanity is around, they will be, too.

If you love music, you can find a way to do it.

What's next for you?

Mostly concentrating on the live show, working on my musicianship, performing skills.  I'm really having fun performing.  I'm also developing workshops, performances with students, trying to use Beethoven's Wig in different ways.  I'm working with animators on developing a mix of visuals for the live show, too.

I've also been toying around with ideas for a new album, but that's a little ways off.