Last Friday, March 6, I had the pleasure of attending a recital by USC student Cassie Peterson. Cassie is an excellent pop and jazz singer who is about to graduate with a BA in music from USC. I should also mention that she is a friend of mine and that I have worked with her as a musician in many different situations, so I won't pretend to be entirely objective about the experience.

Cassie came to USC as a Jazz Studies major; at that time she was very committed to being a "jazz singer." Over her time here, as many of us students do, she lost a degree of enthusiasm for that particular tradition. She has changed quite radically and now works almost exclusively in a pop/folk vein. Her recital was a reflection of this; she began with an homage to her jazz roots by singing two standards in a straight-ahead (traditional) jazz style, and the remaining selections were pop, both originals and covers.

I mention this background not to shed light on the music. In fact, the music needs no explanation. It was simply perfect. Cassie and her band were battling sound problems the entire night, but not a note was out of place. The material, the programming of the material, and the execution of the material was at as high a level as I've seen live. If you're curious about what she sounds like, you can check out her Myspace here.

So what is this post about? The recital brought up some interesting aesthetic issues to me. You see, Cassie and I have wildly differing philosophies about music. Cassie says she is only interested in music with emotional content, music that "tells a story." I, on the other hand, am only interested in making a thing of beauty - I believe that pure music exists, and even where a song has clear emotional content, I'm more interested in the sound than any emotions it carries or inspires.

It's not that I think that music can't have an emotional element or inspire emotion; I just think that good music doesn't necessarily do so. You see, most of the time when people say they're only interested in "expression," they're merely paying lip service to the idea and aren't truly committed to it. It's actually pretty radical, if you think about it: it seems to suggest that they are most interested in raw punk or the challenging music of Ornette Coleman or Schoenberg (who, possibly apocryphally, said, "I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting"). It also seems to suggest that they are uninterested in the relatively pure music of a Haydn string quartet or a Dizzy Gillespie album.

Cassie is different, however. She believes wholeheartedly in the principle and actually follows through with it. I've tried to stump her by giving examples of music she likes that is to me "pure music," but she always finds emotional content in it. At her recital, she was in full emotional connection mode; she frowned during the sad songs and smiled during the happy ones. Now in my opinion she always sounds great, even when she's emotionally disconnected. However, she sounded even better at the recital. I've noticed at other times that she sounds better when she's more connected.

This leaves me with a classic question. An aesthetic with which I generally disagree has results I love; what, then, is its place in my artistic life? At this point, the easy way out is to say that having an emotional connection to the music is a technical tool that helps the sound even if the emotion isn't the eventual goal. I guess this is like the football player who is passionate about his sport. Winning, not emotion, is the point of the game, but the passion increases his chances of winning. When I am emotionally connected to music (I indeed can be; it's a skill I've developed in order to serve bandleaders who want that from me), I also sound better, even without buying into emotion on an intellectual level.

But this all has very little to do with Cassie. Take a listen and you'll probably like it, regardless of your philosophical outlook.