Mark Applebaum - Sock Monkey (2008)

By his own account, Stanford University's Mark Applebaum has paid his scholarly debts, crossed his t's and dotted his i's, gotten a grip on the administrative aspect of teaching, and set himself on the university-bred agenda. Applebaum's earlier music reflects more directly his involvement in academia, and, not surprisingly, he racked up a number of awards and other accolades for his achievements in such areas about which he no longer cares very much. While his situation as a university professor continues much as it has, Applebaum's music has gone off the rails, intersected at some point by restlessness, the creative spirit, developments in music outside academe, and a sense of humor. He builds electro-acoustic instruments, works as a jazz pianist, and plays in a piano duet with his father Robert Applebaum, has written orchestral music, is an enthusiastic proponent of so-called "Plunderphonics," fulfilled a number of commissions, and has released a number of recordings on the Innova and Tzadik labels. Innova's Sock Monkey is an assemblage of relatively short pieces that touches on various aspects of Applebaum's creativity, ranging from the most structured to the most ephemeral.

The 12 compositions here range from the orchestral title work, Sock Monkey, to Entre Funérailles, realized here for solo trumpet. Magnetic North, composed to commission from the Meridian Arts Ensemble, features an instrument/invention called the "Mousketier," which Applebaum describes as "made of junk, hardware, and found objects" and played in various ways. The three pieces entitled Theme in Search of Variations feature three different ensembles -- a percussion trio, the ensembles sfSound, and Beta Collide -- with Applebaum providing the game plan, a theme to which his interpreters respond in the form of variations. A similar game structure characterizes the three pieces titled Martian Anthropology. The Composer's Middle Period is realized from a graphic score; by contrast, Sock Monkey is a standard, full orchestral score.

Of this widely varied program, On the Nature of the Modern Age has the loosest construct of all the pieces, yet feels the most organic. It is basically an informed improvisation for samples and piano duo, written in memory of one of Applebaum's teachers, composer John Silber, and leaves the most distinct and determinate impression of all the music here. Sock Monkey, to some extent stimulated by the exuberant running around of Applebaum's toddler while he was composing it, is also immediate, lighthearted, and close to being cinematic. Magnetic North is rather on the fence between determinate and exploratory; its relative success in approximating a Spike Jonesian texture out of pseudo-serial gestures is partly due to the naturally high-spirited and infectious playing of the Meridian Arts Ensemble. The pieces based out of game theory and employing more experimental, structural ideas seem less successful merely as they leave less of an impression; if there was an attempt to communicate something other than playing of a kind, then it is not getting through. Applebaum's "plundered" version of Mozart's Variations on "Ah, vous dirai-je maman," titled Variations on Variations on a Theme by Mozart, is realized with 18 prepared pianos, although they do not all play at once. The various variations are realized two at a time, simultaneously in alternating channels, by 18 differently prepared sampled pianos. Although the idea is clever, this piece seems like a bit of a flop as the original variation set seems hardly digested. The timbre of the music is changed, but not its essential content, and it comes off like a kind of lo-fi Wendy Carlos realization.

Therefore, there is good here and some not so good. Applebaum may profess his liberation from the conservatory, yet there is still plenty of that within him, and several of the open-form works were designed for teaching and sound like it. Walking the line between being hip, edgy, and relevant and being on the tenure track is a tightrope indeed, and it is impressive that Applebaum can do both, but judging from Innova's Sock Monkey, he seems short of having unconditional success in either area. Nevertheless, there are definitely moments of inspiration here, not to mention a distinct musical character that, despite Applebaum's honors and awards, is still evolving, and that provides hope for potential here.