Another student, Qu Dawei, sat down at the piano to execute a half-Romantic, half-jazzy solo somewhat in the manner of Gershwin.
Mr. Zorn's short abstract piece has no words, just a vocal line for solo soprano singing all manner of "ah" sounds and vocal gymnastics.
When I asked him what music he likes, he said he listened "mostly to pop, sometimes classical". Another student, Qu Dawei, sat down at the piano to execute a half-Romantic, half-jazzy solo somewhat in the manner of Gershwin.
During that period he gave thought to a sequence of orchestral pieces, some with solo soprano, rather in the manner of a distilled Mahler symphony.
One notable element of this work is Bernstein's use of the piano throughout the score, not in the manner of a solo instrument but rather as a prominent orchestral member.
Bands and more singer-songwriterly solo artists abound -- significantly, in a manner that recalls the '60s, when British music was great because it defied London-centric cultural tendencies and burst out of every corner of the country.
Christian Reinert sang the solo tenor line in the calm, meditative manner that Joyce's hypnotic text seems to demand.
"Music of Changes," a forty-three-minute piece for solo piano, was written entirely in this manner, the labor-intensive process consuming most of a year.
At one Super Bowl gathering, at least, Prince's extravagant guitar solos, seductive facial expressions and strutting stage manner made boozy viewers whoop and wonder in equal measure.
He would strum just three notes in the entirety of a 30-second solo or hammer away in an evocatively discordant manner reminiscent of Neil Young.
