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THE URBAN MAN FOR KCRW FOR OCT 12, 2009

City Noir

By Marc Porter Zasada

The other night I was driving up Coldwater Canyon from the Valley toward L.A. when I remembered that Gustavo Dudamel was in that very minute taking up the baton for the first time at Disney Hall.

Maybe I should have been there...but maybe I should have been a lot of places.

I switched on the radio just in time to catch the applause as our new conductor took the podium for the premiere of “City Noir” by John Adams: a piece written, I figured, just for the Urban Man.

Like much modern classical, it’s a mashup: little splinters of ideas and jittery cries from wind instruments, followed by a bit of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” a taste of “Bald Mountain,” and plenty from the movie “Chinatown.” Nasty clarinets make unwanted comments. Unhappy detectives down cheap bourbon. Blondes suck Lucky Strikes. One section of the orchestra tries to hatch a plan, but quickly gets overwhelmed by seductive grooves from another section. The streets are always slick from rain; and yes, whenever our L.A. hero is about to go for a big coherent anthem, the music descends into confusion.

At Disney Hall, people may have been dressed in flowing gowns or penguin suits with white bow ties, but the Urban Man was wearing his gray fedora and distressed leather jacket as he exceeded the speed limit in a somewhat-dented ’99 Taurus…it was the SE model, with wide tires and one of those little wings on the back.

In fact, Adams should be pleased to hear that just as the L.A. Phil launched into a high-speed chase of shouting brass, and distressed oboes, I was screaming up a series of dark curves among uneasily-perched homes after an overheated meeting with a guy about a get-rich-quick scheme.

Like Adams, I know that whatever our symphonic pretensions, we are ultimately a town of uneasily-perched homes and get-rich-quick schemes. And if my latest, like so many, eventually falls into confusion, I will say, in the spirit of the city, “so be it.”

The best definition I ever heard of noir came from the poet David Lehman, who called it “the poetry of failure.” He pointed out that noir films always chronicle the failure of a character to renew himself, a failure to start fresh and escape the past. L.A. is the headquarters of noir, said Lehman, because we are a city built on the false promise that you can always start fresh.

Some critics thought “City Noir” a little too derivative of film scores from the Forties and Fifties. But like many, I enjoyed the irony of an L.A. cliché being offered by an enthusiastic young prodigy from Venezuela, just 28, this latest boy-man to give the city one more fresh start. As I drove, I could clearly picture Dudamel with his unrestrained gestures and exquisitely wild hair: each so necessary to a good conductor.

During the hectic third movement I found myself descending through North Beverly Hills, peering into the gated compounds of the big mansions, one French Mansard, the next Tudor—each trying to establish that coherent anthem while hiding who knows what terrifying dream.

During intermission, I flipped around the dial for the weather report, happy to learn that yes, rain really was on its way. And when I reached my driveway, I sat through the second half of the program, Mahler’s first Symphony, where Dudamel displayed the literal obviousness of his youth, laying his cards right on the table. If the score said forté, by G-d, Dudamel gave us forté. I like that in a musician. It made me think I could trust him—and as he gathered the Phil for its last enormous crescendo, I thought, yes: L.A. had a new icon, the Urban Man was about to get rich; the long dry summer was finally coming to an end—briefly all was well in the City of Noir.