CONCERT REVIEW: Music in the American Wild

Posted on August 16, 2016 by maestrobeats

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On Sunday, August 14, I had the pleasure of attending a concert presented by Music in the American Wild at the Sunrise Visitor Center in Mount Rainier National Park. Here at Second Inversion, we have been following this project closely, especially since the group arrived in Washington for the western leg of their tour. After learning about this group and their project months ago, I finally had the chance to attend one of their concerts in its “natural habitat.” This occasion was made even more special by the fact that I had attended their concert in Seattle at the Good Shepherd Center on August 6; the opportunity to compare the group’s performances in these two disparate settings was a rare treat.

The concert at Sunrise on Mt. Rainier was the group’s third in that park; they played concerts at Ohanapecosh Campground and Paradise Visitor Center on Friday the 12^th and Saturday the 13^th, respectively. The rangers had the ensemble set up in the picnic area just north of the Sunrise Visitor Center. The concert began at 2pm, in perfect weather.

It doesn’t get much better than this.

The concert began with an introduction by Mt. Rainier National Park’s Education Director, Fawn Bauer. Bauer assisted the group as they arranged their visit to the park, helping them organize everything from where to stay to where and when to set up for their concerts. As she began the introduction, it was clear that Fawn was a natural; she put the crowd at ease and warmed them up for the music to come.

One interesting fact came to light during Fawns introduction: Over half of the 50-60 people attending this performance had come to the site specifically for this event; the rest had drifted in by chance. The proportion of people that had come specifically for the concert seemed high to me, but it was an inspiring statistic; people will, in fact, visit unusual venues for new music! That said, given how many people were at Sunrise that day, I thought the crowd should have been larger.

Note the crowded parking lot.

Just like their concert at the Good Shepherd Center, Music in the American Wild’s director and flutist Emlyn Johnson began the performance by welcoming the audience and explaining the genesis of the project. For more on that, see our earlier post. This bit of discussion was the first of many; Emlyn and the other musicians took questions from the audience between each of the pieces.

Music in the American Wild’s Emlyn Johnson speaks with the audience at Sunrise.

Over the course of the 75-minute concert, some audience members drifted away, but they were largely replaced by new listeners that drifted in and out of the grove of trees in which the concert was set. The audience remained engaged throughout the show, asking many thoughtful questions.

The audience was spread between off-limits areas set aside for native wildflower recovery

The concerts that I attended included five (at Mt. Rainier) six (in Seattle) pieces (of the 11 they commissioned), four of which were the performed on both programs. This overlap presented a special opportunity to compare these nature-inspired works in different settings. The sharp contrasts created by the disparate settings of the two concerts highlight interesting aspects of how location and setting interact with music.

One of the pieces that was shared between the two programs was Tonio Ko’s Covers and Uncovers. This piece begins and ends with very soft percussion parts played by all members of the ensemble on desk (or “concierge”) bells. These difference in how this element sounded in the two settings was striking. At the indoor concert at the chapel, the desk bells had the flavor of a “challenging” sound: the kind of sound that might make traditional concertgoers squirm a bit as they get used to the novelty. However, in the outdoor setting at Mt. Rainier, the bells had the opposite effect! Because these sounds exist on the fringes of traditional classical music, they served to blend the opening and closing of Ko’s piece into the natural ambience of the mountainside venue, gently introducing the more traditional sounds to come. The end result was that Covers and Uncovers was one of the more effective pieces on the program at Sunrise.

The other remarkable contrast between the two versions of a particular piece that the ensemble performed in both locations was Chris Chandler‘s the view from here. This piece is a musical triptych depicting Shenandoah National Park. The first movement, “drones and swells of the not-far road” was notably different in tone at the two concerts that I attended. This movement features a musical re-creation of the sounds that visitors to Shenandoah National park hear coming from Skyline Drive, which winds through the entire length of the park. At the Good Shepherd concert, in the middle of the city, the imitation road noise blended pleasantly with the city sounds drifting through the open windows of the Chapel Performance Space; it was easy to accept the sounds of a busy roadway integrated into a natural setting while listening at the Good Shepherd Center. The effect at the Mt. Rainier performance was entirely different. Unlike at the Good Shepherd Center, where the hum of the city is ubiquitous, Mt. Rainier has almost no urban sounds. In this peaceful setting, the simulated road noise of Skyline Drive took on an intrusive and obscene cast. The somewhat dissonant and harmonically unsettled moments in this section of music that sounded perfectly natural in the city sounded grotesque and inappropriate in the near-pristine acoustic of Mt. Rainier. Despite my negative reaction to this element of the piece at the Mt. Rainier concert, the overall effect was positive; the different reactions I had to the piece were a beautiful consequence of experiencing it in two dramatically different locales.

These contrasts that arose solely from the different venues of the two concerts can teach us about the musical value of setting. Sure, one would expect some dramatic differences when these concerts are compared; the familiar sound of a rich, warm, wood-heavy concert hall near sea level and the dry acoustic encountered outdoors on the side of a volcano at 6400 feet could not be much more different! Still, the specific ways in which the music seemed to change are worth exploring, especially given that this music was written with wild outdoor spaces in mind.

You can catch the final concerts by Music in the American Wild this week in Olympic National Park. Stay tuned to the Second Inversion blog for the final installment of our series on Music in the American Wild, coming next week!

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All photos by Seth Tompkins

ALBUM REVIEW: Northwestern University Cello Ensemble’s Shadow, Echo, Memory

Posted on August 15, 2016 by maestrobeats

by Brendan Howe

Inspired by his profound love for his new bride, Alma, Mahler saturated his Adagietto (the fourth movement of his Fifth Symphony) with his love of obsession and conflict. If you haven’t yet heard it performed by a world-class institution, I would recommend watching a clip of Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic perform the Adagietto so you get a sense of just how high the bar has been set with regard to the movement’s emotional capacity and execution.

For non-expert groups performing the masterpiece, walking the line between musical expression and self-indulgence often proves an impossible challenge. The Northwestern University Cello Ensemble, however, delivers a sublime performance that showcases both the work and the magnificent capacity of the cello to express the ineffable as the capstone track from their latest album, Shadow, Echo, Memory.

Shadow, Echo, Memory

The Adagietto rounds out the album’s emotional exhibition of the cello as well as its theme of capturing specific moments in larger contexts. Shadow, Echo, Memory was recorded by a total of 45 current students and 15 highly successful alums of Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music, under direction of the celebrated cellist and educator Hans Jørgen Jensen.

It is a collection of 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st century music written and arranged for cello ensemble. The well-established idea of the cello’s unique ability to match the range and timbre of the human voice plays a large role, as Fauré’s Après un Rêve, Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, and contemporary composer Zachary Wadsworth’s Three Lacquer Prints are all arrangements of vocal works. What makes this album stand out, however, is the Ensemble’s ability to combine technical excellence with poignant depth (Kernis’ Ballad, Mahler’s Adagietto) and conceptual clarity (Wadsworth’s Three Lacquer Prints, van der Sloot’s Shadow, Echo, Memory) in a moving and accessible fashion.

The opening track of the album orients the audience solidly on the conceptual end of the spectrum. The vocal group The Esoterics had commissioned Wadsworth for a piece to premiere in October 2012, and he began fleshing out an idea he’d been contemplating – while poetry and music are narrative forms of art that share the characteristic of changing over time, the relationship between visual art and poetry (and accordingly, music) is both far less tangible and underrepresented.

In order to rectify this oversight, Wadsworth found inspiration in a collection of Amy Lowell’s verse poems on Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, written between 1913 and 1919 (the three pertinent poems are reproduced in the album booklet). Wadsworth was struck by the elegance with which Lowell captured single moments through the inferred context of her words while ultimately respecting their static nature.

Wadsworth took this string of artistic influence one step further by writing one vocal vignette each using the Lowell poems Temple Ceremony, A Year Passes, and A Burnt Offering. The pieces mold and elongate Lowell’s lyrics to lend valuable time and perspective to the motionless, print-inspired experience.

Adding a fourth artistic interpretation to the woodblock-poem-chorus dynasty already in play, the NU Cello Ensemble recorded arrangements of Wadsworth’s Three Lacquer Prints, removing the restrictions of language in favor of the familiar, interpretive qualities of cello music.

NU Cello Ensemble

Roland Pidoux arranged Fauré’s Après un Rêve with similarly emancipatory results, achieving a surreal dreamscape with eight cellos that would be unattainable with piano accompaniment. Van der Sloot’s titular track, Shadow, Echo, Memory, goes the furthest back into human history of all the pieces, drawing inspiration from Ice Age cave paintings. It opens with a spectral, water-droplet percussive quality, which feeds into the wide range of the unknowable creativity of the ancient mind – anxious slides, centered resolutions, fitful exclamations, and intense darkness.

As the album continues onward from the Rachmaninov through the Mahler, it becomes clear that the Ensemble has achieved their purported goal of using the cello to express textures of dark and light, bring to life sounds and images from another time, and finally to aid listeners in revisiting their own histories. It does indeed provide a fascinating, haunting individual experience to those who are up for a little soul-searching.

STAFF PICKS: Friday Faves

Posted on August 12, 2016 by maestrobeats

Second Inversion hosts share a favorite selection from this Friday’s playlist. Tune in during the indicated hours below on Friday, August 12 to hear these pieces. In the meantime, you’ll hear other great new and unusual music from all corners of the classical genre 24/7!

Daniel Wohl: 323 (Transit) on New Amsterdam Records

Like so much of what we play on Second Inversion, “323” by Daniel Wohl is difficult to categorize. It’s an exuberant piece full of interesting sounds, found noises, and jangly percussion that I’m fairly sure is pots and pans yet the overall feel of the piece can be summed up with the word “radiant.” It’s music that pulsates and cuts into your tympanic membrane with its soft edges. “323” is like if drone and a junkyard gave birth to… a solar system? It’s confusing, but it is a bold confusion that truly works and inspires. – Rachele Hales

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 1pm hour today to hear this recording.

Darcy James Argue: Phobos (Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society) on New Amsterdam Records

If you’re someone who is immersed in (small ‘c’) classical music most or all of the time, it can be refreshing (and necessary) to bend your ears on something that really challenges you to think about what makes music “classical.” Where are the boundaries of the art form? Darcy James Argue’s track Phobos can help you grapple with (if not answer) these questions. This is first and foremost jazz, but it has so many elements more closely associated with other types of music that it really forces listeners to ask themselves some tough questions (if they are insistent on classifying the music at all!). Among the shades of minimalism and post-rock, those big-band “jazz” chords begin to sound like tone clusters… Listen to the barriers fall! Wonderful! – Seth Tompkins

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 4pm hour today to hear this recording.

Missy Mazzoli: Vespers for a New Dark Age (Victoire, Lorna Dune, and Glenn Kotche) on New Amsterdam Records

The Western classical music tradition as we know it began in the Church. And both the Church and the Western classical music tradition have historically excluded women from positions of power and authority.

Which is a big part of what makes composer Missy Mazzoli’s 30-minute masterwork Vespers for a New Dark Age so striking, so liberating, and—for lack of a better word—so brilliant. Performed with her all-female new age art pop ensemble Victoire, electro keyboardist Lorna Dune, and rock drummer Glenn Kotche, the piece reimagines the traditional vespers prayer service in the modern age, replacing the customary sacred verses with the haunting and elegant poetry of Matthew Zapruder.

The result is a 21^st century version of the vespers service which explores the intersection of our modern technological age with the old-fashioned formality of religious services. Oh, and I guess it could also be heard as a feminist assertion of women’s immense (and too often forgotten) contributions to the classical music tradition. – Maggie Molloy

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 6pm hour today to hear this recording.

Kevin Puts: River’s Rush (Marin Alsop, Peabody Symphony Orchestra) on NAXOS Records

With its churning arpeggios and big, muscular orchestration, this piece reminds me of hurtling down the Salmon River in Idaho on a whitewater rafting trip. The tremendous excitement that the opening music generates is matched by the beauty of a lushly-orchestrated, flowing middle section. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his opera Silent Night, Puts is known for his flute and piano concertos and four symphonies, but this stand-alone work might be my new favorite. – Geoffrey Larson

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 9pm hour today to hear this recording.

ALBUM REVIEW: Maya Beiser’s TranceClassical

Posted on August 8, 2016 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

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Johann Sebastian Bach’s influence on the classical music tradition is immeasurable. Even now, nearly three centuries after his death, he remains one of the most performed composers of all time. Bach was the first of the three B’s, he was the golden standard against which all future composers would come to be measured—he was the undisputed king of counterpoint.

And he was also among the first composers that cellist Maya Beiser ever heard as a child, quickly becoming a central pillar in her musical development. Bach’s influence on Beiser extended far past her studies of the Baroque tradition or even the classical tradition—clear into her musical interpretations of 21^st century compositions.

Beiser’s new album, TranceClassical, features the cutting-edge works of an incredible cast of contemporary composers: Michael Gordon, Imogen Heap, Glenn Kotche, Lou Reed, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Mohammed Fairouz, and David T. Little.

And yet, the album is not wholly a product of the 21^st century. TranceClassical is bookended by Beiser’s own arrangements of classic works by Bach and Hildegard von Bingen—and every 21^st century work in between draws from the style, sensitivity, and skill of the early classical music tradition.

“TranceClassical started from a washed-out still photo in my mind,” Beiser said. “Me, as a little girl curled with a blanket on her parents’ sofa, hearing Bach for the first time, hanging onto every mysterious note coming out of the scratchy LP. TranceClassical is the arc my mind sketches between everything I create and Bach—David Lang and Bach, Glenn Kotche and Bach, Michael Gordon and Bach.”

The album begins with Beiser’s own wistful arrangement of Bach’s famous “Air on the G String,” recreated as she first heard it in her childhood: the melody singing sweetly above the sounds of a distant, crackling LP.

Composer Michael Gordon’s “All Vows” features another meandering melody, this one echoing in churchlike reverberations. Interlacing cello motives transport the listener straight into a meditative trance, evoking a somber and nostalgic glance backward in music history.

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It’s followed by a glance forward: Beiser’s rendition of synth-pop superstar Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek.” Here we find Beiser singing in ghostly three part harmonies above a solemn cello accompaniment—all heavily processed to create an unshakable sense of eeriness and desolation.

The cello moves back to center stage for rock drummer Glenn Kotche’s contribution, “Three Parts Wisdom.” Densely layered to showcase Beiser’s remarkable cello chops, the piece features one fiercely challenging melodic line plus seven layers of computer-generated delays—and all happening in real time.

And speaking of rock stars: the album also features a rendition of the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin,” arranged by composer David Lang. But don’t expect the hypnotic drone of Lou Reed’s original two-chord tune—Lang’s arrangement is almost unrecognizable, layering Beiser’s despondent, breathless vocals above jagged cello arpeggios in this haunting rendition.

Composer Julia Wolfe’s “Emunah” is a different kind of haunting: the droning, dissonant, and anxiety-driven kind of haunting. Wordless vocals whisper above cello tremolo, relentlessly pulling the listener back and forth in time.

Arab-American composer Mohammed Fairouz’s “Kol Nidrei” is perhaps the most striking and evocative work on the album. The piece echoes of ancient cantorial styles, with Beiser singing sacred Arameic text above ominously deep, dark cello melodies.

The trance is broken, however, with the onset of composer David T. Little’s “Hellhound,” a metallic rock ‘n’ roll tune inspired by blues legend Robert Johnson’s song “Hellhound on my Trail.” Andrew McKenna Lee steps in on electric guitar, but Beiser shreds hard enough on her cello to rival his raging solos.

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And in another unexpected musical turn, the album ends with Beiser’s own cello arrangement of Hildegard von Bingen’s choral work “O Virtus Sapientiae.” (Yes, as in Hildegard the 11^th century composer and Christian mystic you studied in music history class.) Beiser’s rendition, however, features no vocals at all—it doesn’t need any. The sacred, solemn melody of her cello is music enough.

And although medieval choral music seems a far cry from the metallic drone of the Velvet Underground, Beiser manages the full range of music on the album with skill, precision, and charisma. Because whether she’s playing Julia Wolfe or Imogen Heap, Michael Gordon, or even Lou Reed—there’s a little bit of Bach in all of it.

“No matter how far I venture, how rebellious, or avant-garde or electronic, my artistic mooring stays with the creation of this immense genius,” Beiser said. “The pieces I bring here give me a sense of trance—a reverie and meditation on his place in my heart.”

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ALBUM REVIEW: The Edge of Forever featuring The Industry & wildUp

Posted on August 1, 2016 by maestrobeats

by Seth Tompkins

The release of the recording of the chamber opera The Edge of Forever by Los Angeles-based experimental opera company The Industry and modern music collective wild Up is a triumph. However, it is difficult to succinctly encapsulate exactly why this complex release is so tremendously special; some (ok, maybe a lot of) background information is needed first.

The Edge of Forever is a piece that is intentionally bound to a specific time and a specific place. This recording documents a performance that occurred on December 21, 2012. You may remember that date as a moment when various sources predicted an apocalypse of one sort or another because of that date’s association with the ending of the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar. The Edge of Forever is associated with that moment as well; this piece was inspired by the end of the Mayan calendar. Its association with this specific moment in time led its creators to perform it in public only once. This piece will never be performed again; luckily, we have a recording! To be fair, however, the released recording of the piece does contain some post-performance studio addition, but they serve only to recreate the experience of the live performance.

In addition to being tightly bound to a specific moment in time, this piece was designed to be performed specifically in its chosen venue. That venue was Los Angeles’s Philosophical Research Society. This institution is dedicated to the study and preservation of wisdom traditions from around the globe and throughout time, operating without evangelical doctrine. The Edge of Forever was designed to be staged specifically in this space, using various spaces at the Society as the narrative unfolded.

It is also important to note the mission of the Philosophical Research Society, as its devotion to cross-cultural learning and the wisdom of disparate cultures hints at the themes of transcendence and unity that emerge from every element of this piece as it unfolds. All of the major elements of this piece, both obvious and obfuscated, serve these themes. The composer (Lewis Pesacov) and the librettist (Elizabeth Cline) deserve high praise for their success in fusing the elements of The Edge of Forever into a deep and unified whole.

Elizabeth Cline. Photo Credit: Suzy Poling.

Lewis Pesacov. Photo Credit: Michael Leviton

Before exploring this recording, it might be helpful for listeners to brush up on their ancient Mesoamerican theology. However, if that idea is not appealing, the liner notes explain things adequately. Basically, according to the mythological explanation given in the liner notes, a chosen sacrificial individual was prophesized to transcend the previous era of time (pre-December 21, 2012) and act as a bridge into the next era of time through the fulfillment of a great love. That individual is the main character of this opera, La’akan.

Interestingly, and very much in line with the temporal focus of this work, the performance begins in what the creators call the “third act” of the opera. The first two acts are written to have already happened, so the audience joins the action in progress as the third act begins. The liner notes provide a somewhat-detailed account of the story up to the start of the third act. The music of this piece in divided into the five scenes (five tracks) of Act III.

As the recording begins (joining the story in scene 1 of Act III), La’akan is in seclusion, waiting for his beloved, Etznab, to appear. When the lovers are united, the prophecy states that this era of time will end and the new one will begin. Scene 1 is a “procession of the scribes.” The scribes here are four sopranos singing wordless tones that have a distinct “early-music” flavor. Overall, though, it would be difficult to confuse this music with its antique counterpart, given the striking quavering of the voices. This ancient-sounding music gradually transforms into quite modern sounds that remind me of a hypothetical chamber version of Ligeti’s Requiem (1965). The scribes are on a pilgrimage to the caves where La’akan is in seclusion so that they may witness the transformation of one era of time into another. The music of scene 1 is completely a cappella.

Scene 2 is an entr’acte. Temple bowls, I believe, augmented by electronic drones begin this movement. Later, strings and winds enter as this instrumental movement builds to a stirring climax that is at once uplifting and foreboding. The music then fades to a light electronic drone and strings enter. A mournful cello solo continues this movement, supported chiefly by percussion and light backup strings. The movement finishes with meditative drumming that should put even the most resistant or confused listener in the right frame of mind to accept the cosmic and transcendent musical scenes to come.

Scene 3 is quite brief. In this recitative, La’akan sings for the first time, singing the first English words in the piece. As scene 3 blends into scene 4 (an aria), La’akan describes his seclusion. He has focused solely on love, and abandoned all other desires. The instrumental music that accompanies La’akan during scene 4 features the soprano sax and English horn prominently, along with percussion. The sounds made by these two woodwind instruments here strongly resemble the sounds of the Tibetan gyaling. As Scene 4 ends, string imitate these sounds and carry us into Scene 5.

Scene 5 closes the piece with a second aria. As the piece enters this new sonic space that will eventually leave the audience in a warm bath of cosmic joy, a lovely English horn and soprano sax duet sets the tone. The woodwind playing could scarcely be more different that the bristly sounds of Scene 4; this dichotomy highlights both the versatility of the players and the skill of Pesacov, who has managed to compose with admirable economy, using the full expressive range of the instruments.

As Scene 5 progresses, La’akan reveals that the time has come for him to unite with the beloved and usher in a new age. His beloved is neither seen nor heard, but through the music, her presence is clear. The vocals here are accompanied by the full ensemble, but the drum and bells feature prominently. As the piece ends, the music coalesces around a single pitch, fading out in a gesture that suggests an ultimate unity. This might not seem an obvious way to end a piece about a topic that was popularly associated with an apocalypse, but after taking in the narrative of this version of the story, it makes perfect sense.

Much of the music in Scene 5 is reminiscent of John Adams’s The Dharma at Big Sur. Both pieces are deeply spiritual, but approach spirituality from apparently opposite directions (mythology vs spiritual commune with nature). One particularly tantalizing possibility about the source of this similarity might be fact that Adams’s Dharma is also about an “edge,” although a much more concrete edge; the John Adams piece is about standing on the western edge of the American continent. Whatever the true source of their similarity, it is fascinating and pleasing that they end up in similar sonic spaces, but ultimately not surprising, given the orientation of The Edge of Forever toward multifaceted transcendence of apparently unrelated realms.

This overarching themes of unity and transcendence are everywhere in The Edge of Forever. First, it is inside the narrative: it is present in the element of the bridging of two eras of time, the more simple union of a lover with their beloved (who may or may not be supernatural), and the union of humanity with the cosmic through the timeless power of love. This last element of the narrative focuses on the power of love and unity to transcend the human time scale. In the words of the librettist, “one can find forever in each moment.”

These themes are also written into this piece through the composer’s use of the ratio at the heart of the Mayan calendar. The Mayan calendar in question here is built upon the ratio 13:20, and the complex interactions of those two numbers. The Maya were able to use this simple method of counting to understand time scales of cosmic proportions which otherwise would be outside the realm of human comprehension.

Pesacov uses these numbers and this ratio to generate most of the musical structures (both large and small) in the piece. Excitingly, however, the overall effect is not that of a piece created by the cold application of numerals, but rather a lovingly conceived narrative supported by tasteful and interesting instrumental writing. The successful coexistence of these two seemingly opposing motivations is evidence of the composer’s skill.

Here, too, then, is transcendence woven into this piece in two ways: the Mayan calendar itself suggesting the extension of the human mind into otherwise unreachable territory while the construction of musical structures using its elements unifies numbers and musical expression into a beautifully multifaceted whole.

Pesacov also manages to work a third iteration of unity and transcendence into this score with his ingenious orchestration. The ensemble here is relatively small, but it is packed with instruments that have association with religions from around the world, thus deepening this piece’s commitment to transcendence. From Tibet, there are singing bowls (I think), the replication of the sound of the gyaling by the soprano saxophone and the English horn, and the conch shell. The conch is also found in the religious traditions of Pacific island nations, India, East Asia, the Caribbean, and (poignantly, in the case of this piece) Mesoamerica. Other instruments in this piece are common to religious traditions too numerous to name; drumming, bells, and a cappella singing are firmly in this category. So, even the instrumentation itself contributes to the themes of unity and transcendence in The Edge of Forever.

When I encountered this piece initially, the interesting story and beautiful performances of the players and cast drew me in. Then, the more deeply I explored this piece and its backstory, the more layers of connection (transcendence) I found. This tells me that Pesacov and Cline really knew what they were doing. The result of their multifaceted success is that any listener can enjoy this release; you can listen for the intricate construction and efficient writing or you can just sit back and enjoy the beauty of the thing, or both! Whatever your motivation, I think it would be difficult for any listener to experience The Edge of Forever without feeling the love.