February 2012
5 posts
LOUNGE PIANO GANGBANG
[composed entirely on the Notes application of my iPhone between Rockefeller Center and 2nd Avenue on the F subway line, and also in bed between 4-6 a.m. this morning, because I couldn’t sleep. Presented unedited.]
I’ve never thought that being a whore would bother me. I mean, like, an actual whore. Somehow I think I could separate love and sex (God knows I’ve done it before)...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN
Just before I get off the 1 train, a woman looks up from her book and says to me, “Celebrate your freedom.”
Conversation With a Nine Year Old Student That...
Him: “What?” Me: “Nothing I’m just sighing.”
dispatch from the titanic
…turning 30 in five days, i remember half-a-decade ago, standing before this fountain with my closest friends, saturated with three days’ worth of $2 margaritas and Pepto Bismol (hit communally from the bottle between cocktails), watching this show with this song by accident as we walked to our airport shuttle about to be swept to our different parts of the country; mine was texas....
January 2012
6 posts
New York Compliment
“Of course I talk to my therapist about you!”
Chicken or the Egg
I have no inspiration to teach people who have no inspiration to learn.
Conflict / Resolution
I think every musician is in some way addicted to conflict. Why else would we practice? “The search for perfection,” answers the wide-eyed conservatory student. Well, I won’t argue, but I also won’t say there’s any difference. Forget music, ask anyone who’s ever looked for perfection in anything — in a spouse, for instance. Do these searches ever end...
PUSHED INTO THE CLOSET
Come on guys. Haven’t you ever come out before? We, of all people, should know that the Tim Tebow blogcircus will do nothing to bring him, or anyone else for that matter, out of the closet; that is, if they in fact live closeted lives in the first place.
Exhibit A: The first 25 years of my life. I talked a certain way, liked certain things, did certain activities, and even as everyone...
FAITH AND DELUSION
I’ve been disappointed by rejection but never once discouraged. Having faced rejection, say, about three to five times a week for the past thirteen years, the common onlooker might suggest I examine the fine line between persistence and insanity, faith and delusion, but I also might suggest that this onlooker simply doesn’t get it. Wait for positive feedback? Who has the time?...
Free Downloadable Album: ADAM TENDLER: LIVE IN...
Free Download
ADAM TENDLER: LIVE IN MAUI — JOHN CAGE’S SONATAS AND INTERLUDES FOR PREPARED PIANO
or go to bit.ly/sonatasandinterludes
December 2011
7 posts
a memory before bed - "you're not special"
I played the saxophone for a year when I was ten. I might have been good at it, too, but I already played the piano, and I knew I was better that. As a keyboard player, the issue of “what should I do with the school band?” would haunt me for awhile. In the elementary marching band, my role was that of banner holder, in high school, I played xylophone — piano, xylophone, same...
VERMONT FRAGMENT
(MAY/JUNE, 2006)
When I returned to Vermont, the first thing I did was have surgery on a hernia I gave myself a two Februarys prior after my hospital dispatch and an irresponsible weight lifting regime. Lately it had been more visible than ever on my lower-right pelvis, and if I coughed or laughed, it would pop out like a tumor. Since my health insurance was running out [soon], this was my last...
"WOAH YOU'RE HERE!" - TEXAS FRAGMENTS
(TEXAS, 4/22/06)
The next morning, instead of taking I-10 west across Texas, I took the less-direct but more scenic Highway 90, stretching from Houston through the southern Texas desert. The terrain was desolate and rocky, sometimes flat, sometimes immense and mountainous, giant hedges of earth colored like brown sugar. Birds that looked like vultures coasted in large, calm circles against a sky...
VERMONT ARTICLES
ONLY HUMAN - EASTER IN NEW ORLEANS
(NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, Easter Sunday 2006)
My Hyundai snaked through the narrow streets and cobble-stoned corridors of New Orleans, Matilda serving as tour guide from the tiny tomb of the backseat, legs folded in against her body, and Ernesto sitting disinterestedly in the passenger seat. I couldn’t use my rearview mirror because someone had smashed it the night before; I wasn’t sure...
LOUISIANA FRAGMENT
(ST. BERNARD PARISH, LOUISIANA, 4-12?-06)
It was the only sign of life for miles. THREE FREE HOT MEALS A DAY! EMERGENCY COMMUNITIES. MADE WITH LOVE CAFÉ AND GRILL.
I parked the car and walked toward two enormous domed tents.
They guarded a small city of camping tents, Army tents, porta-potties, and even a few teepees.
Tractor-trailers had been converted into giant refrigerators, powered...
TALES OF BILOXI
(BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI, early-April 2006)
While working in the houses of the dead and displaced, we met those neighbors who survived, and furthermore, who chose to stay, living in campers and FEMA trailers, and often they would come out and tell us their stories — stories about bodies in the streets and people drowned in attics. One day they decided prepare us a crawfish boil as a gesture of...
November 2011
9 posts
GEORGIA FRAGMENT
(AUGUSTA, GEORGIA, 3/23/06)
…at a visual and performing arts high school, [in] a concrete room with blue walls and bright fluorescent lights, a young girl was playing Bach’s Minuet in G on a Baldwin grand piano in the corner. When she got up, another girl took her place and began Bach’s c minor prelude from Book One of The Well-Tempered Clavier, the same prelude I once used for my...
MICHIGAN FRAGMENT
(“FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE,” KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN, 3/20/06)
“I was in touch with some residents who will have dinner with you,” said Corrine, my concert organizer, “if that’s okay with you.”
“Sounds great.”
“They’re eating at four forty-five, which is,” she looked at her watch, “now.”
“That’ll work.”
Corrine led me to a table in the cafeteria where three older women sat. They all had white...
Postcard from Zuccotti
The air smells of halal food and doughnuts from a fortress of vendors surrounding Zuccotti Park. It’s cloudy and cold, and men are hanging Christmas lights. My best friend and I sit on one of the granite walls winding through the park as someone from Occupy Wall Street tells a group of people behind us to step off the mounds of mud these walls protect to avoid risking another eviction from...
MAINE FRAGMENT
(PORTLAND, MAINE, 1/13/06)
Waiting, I strummed a guitar, and at quarter-past-seven a conservatory staff member told me that a small line had begun to form outside the hall. “For an eight o’ clock concert?” I asked, sitting up. ”That’s great! People are getting here early!”
“There was a typo in the newspaper,” she replied coolly. “It said seven-thirty.”
I shelved the...
The Day I Met F
(journal from 11/15/09)
…I was so FULL of food and beer that I thought I might wake up like Gregor Samsa, only not transformed into a giant insect but instead into Precious from that new movie. I didn’t — I woke up just fine —but the enduring fear led me to go for a run this afternoon down to Battery Park and back.
At the end, I decided to finish with a little jog onto the...
THE BALLAD OF DEB
(LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, 12/05/05)
…for days, Deb and I had been sitting in her office, sipping vanilla-flavored coffee, shooting comments across the room, networking, pitching, proposing — doing anything to get a “Yes.” For someone who had begged me over several emails not to come to Lincoln because she thought — correctly — that setting up a last-minute concert...
THE LEGEND OF SUPAI
(ARIZONA DESERT, 11/26/05)
Falling in love, I’d noticed, didn’t work. After our Army tent tryst, Calvin and I still saw each other, but only so often, and usually in odd places. Sometimes in the Toyota truck I drove throughout high school. Sometimes at my house. Once on a baseball field — we finished in the dugout. Or in his room, where I also learned about his experiences, his...
ALASKA FRAGMENT
(11/2/05)
I returned from Hawaii to San Francisco for only a matter of hours before departing for my next set of concerts in Alaska. As it turned out, I would hit three different time zones and climates within the space of a day. But airports, like casinos, lack a sense of time. You can buy a cheeseburger and fries and wash it down with a vodka soda at 8 a.m. and no one will bat an eye. In the...
CALIFORNIA FRAGMENT
(SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 10/24/05)
“I cried a few times during the show, actually,” Candace said. We were munching on baklava in her kitchen after the concert. ”The music was so intense. I’ve never seen you really perform, I don’t think. At least not like that. I can’t describe it. It’s shocking. You just… channel the music up there. The guy in the motorcycle...
October 2011
10 posts
SUICIDE TABLE - VIRGINIA CITY WITH SHANE
(VIRGINIA CITY, NEVADA, 10/18/05?)
Shane and I chummed around the smoky neon oasis of Reno for the next few days like a couple of playful puppies. One evening he took me to see Virginia City, one of the oldest surviving towns in Nevada, a product of the mining boom, which sat atop a nearby mountain.
We pulled over at a turnoff and snapped a few pictures. Him. Me. My car.
He hadn’t been...
THE BALLAD OF AARON
(SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, 10/14/05)
These Mormon boys had me more drunk than I’d been in years, and I watched as more and more trickled into Aaron’s nondescript condo, entering unannounced and helping themselves to the liquor. They almost all wore button down shirts and baseball hats turned to the side. Someone turned on an Xbox game with multiple first-person perspectives, and then...
THE BALLAD OF TODD
(BOULDER, COLORADO, 10/8/05)
“Come in, you strange one.” Todd opened the door to his small Boulder home. He was wearing loose pants, a Hawaiian shirt, and a sombrero. It was raining again. Icy rain. “I’m just watching NASCAR and sewing a button onto my pants.” Before moving to Colorado, Todd taught at my high school in Vermont. I had him for only one year, sophomore Spanish, but his classes...
OHIO FRAGMENT
(CLEVELAND, OHIO, 10/7/05)
… the [Broadway School of Music was] on the second floor of an old brick building in what Barbara [the School’s director] had called a “diverse and industrial” part of Cleveland. Leaving the sirens and screams behind on the street below, I came in drenched [from the rain], but when Barbara asked if I wanted to dry off, I said no. I wanted to...
VIRGINIA FRAGMENT
(MARION, VIRGINIA, 8/28/05)
I arrived at the Lincoln around noon. Daveena asked if I wanted a microphone for the piano and I said no. Sleepy as fuck, I practiced half-heartedly, waiting for the spark to come, some semblance of enthusiasm — from myself, from anyone — but even the ushers and tech people looked bored, and for me it didn’t even feel like a performance day. It felt like I was going...
THE BALLAD OF JANE
(DEWEES ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, 8/25/05)
I still hadn’t showered since the night before when I stayed in a crowded Charleston hostel. The wings of Katrina had washed saltwater and piles of sand onto the city’s streets, with fingers of sand reaching out onto the steaming, overgrown sidewalks. The hurricane itself was still far away and secretly bound for a part of the country that no one, at...
TENNESSEE FRAGMENT
(JUST OUTSIDE NASHVILLE, TENNESSE, 8/21/05)
She answered after three rings, her voice cool and quick. “Hey, what’s up?”
“I’m about forty miles away,” I said, pinching my phone between my shoulder and ear. ”Sorry it got so late.” I’d been driving all day. Florida, Georgia, now Tennessee.
“No it’s fine. I’m just getting out of a recording session here anyway. Meeting...
THE BALLAD OF HEATHER
(VERO BEACH, FLORIDA, 8/20/05)
…I found Heather, the young and vibrant administrator who had helped me book [my Vero Beach] concert. She had blonde hair with red streaks that matched her rosy cheeks. Her fiancé, Mark, was walking around the sunlit lobby strumming a soon-to-be-raffled guitar. He had an adorable face too, like a Cabbage Patch Kid.
——-
…off we drove in...
DELAWARE FRAGMENT
(MILFORD DELAWARE, 8/12/05)
I found myself again forgetting countless notes, chords, even misplacing entire passages, perhaps disconcerted by the stern expressions, the crossed arms, the cold eyes scanning my all-black outfit — all of which seemed to be coming from the men in the room. I felt the urge to run when I stood between pieces to face the audience and introduce the...
A NOTE ON IVES AND NONMUSICIANS
Charles Ives, Three-Page Sonata (1905) (recorded live on KUHF, Houston Public Radio) by adamtendler
(LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, 8/9/05)
“Well, you’re right,” I finally answered, still getting used to the fact that this woman had raised her hand during my concert to submit her opinion. ”He was angry. Ives composed [the Three-Page Sonata] at a time when he was consciously turning his back on...
September 2011
10 posts
CUT THE SH*T - THE COLITIS CUTS OF 88x50
(8/6/11, via Facebook chat)
ME: i plan to do a big book surgery this week. take out all of the poop. literally
FRIEND WHO WORKS IN PUBLISHING: haha, ok
M: [also] take out the “dad” stuff. and see what happens.
F: hmm. okay. why?
M: i think maybe this book should be about: TOUR / GAY / ARTIST[IC] GENESIS, and if it doesn’t have to do with one of those things, maybe it should...
NORTH DAKOTA FRAGMENTS
(International Peace Gardens, 7-11-05)
[Most of my students would be only a few years younger,] and most of my teaching colleagues, decades older. [Every piano faculty member had the opportunity to give a seminar, and Bob, the chair of the department, began his by telling the student body] “Your metronome is your best friend.” I cringed. I’d already sat with Bob through a few days of...
THE BALLAD OF REPHA
(Hope, Arkansas, 6-28-05)
“Adam,” Repha snapped, “Where are you!”
I had the cell phone pinched between my cheek and shoulder as I drove. The night was lit by orange fluorescent streetlights. “I think I’m lost in your neighborhood.”
“I’ve been waiting for hours!”
“Your directions sent me to the wrong house. Did you mean right when you wrote left’”
“I don’t know where you are!” Then she...
THE BALLAD OF PATTY
(north of Bigfork, Minnesota, 7-17-05)
“Bear, tell Adam about your thing! No, wait, I’ll tell him about mine!” Patty sits up in her chair, blowing a wisp of hair from her forehead. Ravel’s Bolero plays through a crackly radio on the windowsill. With the day behind us, not to mention the recital, we’re sipping white wine after a pareve dinner. “Back during my time with the Minnesota...
MONTANA FRAGMENT
(Bozeman, Montana, week of 7-21-05)
Forget the microscopic calendar listing in the weekly alternative newspaper, or the non-presence of my show on the Leaf and Bean’s events window, or the countless rejections I received from Bozeman’s countless venues. It was my housemates, drifters who I’d expected my project to particularly resonate with, who seemed the most dismissive.
They...
THE BALLAD OF MARVIN
(Lander, Wyoming, 7-29-05)
Back in his kitchen, Marvin dug a spoon into his caramel ice cream sundae while I sipped on an Echinacea tea, as if this small gesture toward my body would redeem me for the bag of Taco Bell I’d just scarfed on the way there after the concert. “I’m so sorry,” he said, sounding defeated.
“What are you talking about?”
“I expected there to be a lot more...
THE BALLAD OF KAREN
(Sandpoint, Idaho, around 7-25-05)
Karen had become a kind of surrogate mother for me in Sandpoint, including me in all her family activities and introducing me to all her Sandpoint friends. Not to mention, she’d gotten me a great rate at her daughter’s boyfriend’s motel and let me camp out in her brother’s fish head on the beach the night before.
Meeting her at the Panida...
THE BALLAD OF BRUCE
(Kansas City, 7-1-05)
Bruce invited me to stay at his loft that night, in a building that had once been a popcorn factory. The grinds and cranks still hung from the ceiling.
I accepted without pause, and when I did, he confessed that his bed was actually just two large couches pushed together in his living room, forming a sort of oversized cradle, an arrangement he said would be “very...
INDIANA FRAGMENT
(Bloomington, December 2003)
After my failed hearing, I stopped one member of the piano faculty in the hall and asked what had happened, why I’d failed. He told me that they, the faculty, felt like they knew me well enough by now that they thought I needed to learn the consequences of “getting in my own way.” I turned around, locked myself in my apartment, and suffered what, in looking back,...
IOWA FRAGMENTS
(Spencer, Iowa, 7-3-05)
Martin and Joe didn’t live together, and I never asked if this was because of their straight-laced Spencer environment, or if it was simply their arrangement. Martin had interns living with him periodically, anyway. They were young, male, and typically from out of state; I didn’t know what other specialty was required. One such intern, Tony, was staying with him now...
August 2011
3 posts
THE DAY I PLAYED FOR CHARLES IVES
(Danbury, Connecticut, 6-9-05)
… I left Pleasant Valley for Danbury, Connecticut, the hometown of Charles Ives, whose Three-Page Sonata I placed at the beginning of the recital program.
As an undergrad at Indiana, I fought tooth and nail to study Ives in a doctoral seminar, and my senior year I gave a lecture on his music before the president of the Ives Society. Now I’d finally...
for jerry
everything about you affirms. the music you play affirms for the rest of us that, yes, it can be played. and hearing you play it affirms that, yes, it can be beautiful.
you affirm, with your eyes alone, brimming with life and gratitude, that a god lives within everyone should we choose to engage it, discover it, open ourselves to it.
(this, incidentally, is a relationship we can have with...
TOP PICK
“I’ve seen pianists who happen to be gay, but I’ve never seen a gay who happens to be a pianist.” - man in the front row of my concert, as reported by a friend. San Francisco, 8/12/11
——
PRESENTER: I can’t thank you enough, Adam. You made the Festival into the most awesome evening beyond my fondest dreams. You brought something to the people of...