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August 20, 2008
Ionarts at Large: Rusalka Premiere at the Salzburg Festival
Originally from Ionarts, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
The Air This Week - Boston Globe
The Air This Week Boston Globe, United States - .Round the clock New music programming is broadcast daily by the American Music Center at counterstream.org) . . . A 24-classical-music service is now ... |
Originally from lutoslawski OR xenakis OR boulez OR Dutilleux OR ligeti OR "elliott carter" OR stockhausen OR "steve reich" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
New on Tzadik
New releases from Tzadik:
New for August
Anthony Pateras
ChromatophoreBerangere Maximin
Tant que les Heures PassentBraxton, Graves, Parker
Beyond QuantumMaryanne Amacher
Sound Characters vol. 2Medeski, Martin and Wood
Zaebos: The Book of Angels volume 11Teiji Ito
Watermill
Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)
The Wordless Music 2008-9 Season
From Wordless Music:
Wordless Music
2008-09 Season
(fall / winter shows only)Friday, September 5
Andrew Broder (Fog)
Huntley Miller (Cepia)
Owen Weaver, percussion: music of Iannis Xenakis and John Cage Southern Theater, Minneapolis
Tickets now on saleSunday, September 7
Flying Lotus
So Percussion: “Music for Trains”
Daedelus
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 10pm)
Tickets now on saleSaturday, September 13
Sunday, September 14
Signal with special guest Steve Reich
All-Reich program: “Music for 18 Musicians” and “You Are (Variations)”
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 7pm)
Tickets now on saleTuesday, September 23
Wednesday, September 24
Michael Riesman, piano: performing world premiere arrangements of the film music of Philip Glass (Tuesday 9/23), and the Glass solo piano score to “Dracula” (with live screening of the original 1931 film, Wednesday 9/24)
Andrew Shapiro
Face the Music
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 6:30 and 9:30pm)
Tickets now on saleFriday, September 26
Deaf Center
Library Tapes
ACME: music for string quartet by Ingram Marshall (”Fog Tropes II”) and Philip Glass (Quartet No. 5)
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 7pm)
Tickets now on saleMonday, October 20
Shearwater
Classical performers TBA: Béla Bartók’s 44 Duos for Two Violins
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 7pm)
Tickets now on saleSaturday, November 8
Terry Riley
Bang on a Can All Stars
Special guests TBA
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 7pm)
Co-presented with Bang on a Can
Tickets on sale soon!Sunday, November 9
Sylvain Chauveau
Goldmund
Classical performers TBA
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 7pm)
Tickets now on saleFriday, November 14
Hauschka
Tom Brousseau
Mikhail Simonyan, violin: music of Prokofiev (Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major, Op. 94) and Ravel (Tzigane)
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 7pm)
Tickets now on saleSaturday, November 15
The Cinematic Orchestra
Calder String Quartet: program TBA
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 7pm)
Tickets now on saleFriday, November 21
Stars of the Lid
Hammock
Jocelyn Bonadio, piano: music of Bach, Shostakovich, and John Cage
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC (doors at 6pm and 10pm)
Tickets now on saleThursday, December 4
Friday, December 5
Tim Hecker (with string quartet)
Wordless Music Orchestra
Ryan McAdams, conductorAndrew Norman: Gran Turismo, for eight violins
Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa, for viola, violin, string orchestra, and prepared piano
Jeff Myers: Metamorphosis, for violin and string orchestra
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC
Tickets now on sale
Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
Kronos Quartet just does it
Kronos is once again reviewed.
If you wanted a demonstration of how America differs from the rest of the world, you had only to be at the Kronos Quartet’s Tanglewood concert Thursday night.
Three pieces from the United States existed only in the present. If a sense of history or tradition cropped up, it was there to be skewered. Indeed, a snatch of “America the Beautiful” in Stephen Prutsman’s clowning “Particle 423″ was obliterated by a burst of lunatic drumming, followed by a primal scream into a microphone.
Five pieces from Europe and the Middle East, by contrast, were suffused with yearning and even tragedy.
Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
Portrait of the artist: Evelyn Glennie, musician
Laura Barnett, Guardian Unlimited, 8/19/2008Originally from Classical Music News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)
Paper Instruments
Originally from Window: Scene // Electronic art, new media, and digital culture in New Zealand, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)
Strings with Sex attached
Often I have mentioned ways in which Contemporary Classical Music needs to change in order to gain a larger share of the modern audience. And yet, there are some aspects of the modern marketing approach that I'm not sure are all that beneficial. It's working, but at what cost?
Sex - that's right, sex sells. It always has (and always will). For years the pop industry and put scantly clad females on display, regardless of the relevance to the music - because a bit of female flesh gets the attention of the male audience. Attention leads to sales and therefore profits. Now, it seems, classical music is taking a page (or three) from this book.
The Electric String Quartet is a group of 4 women, all very shapely, and if not quite size Zero, certainly very slender and easy on the eyes. Their music is classical, with electronics. They are reported to be some of the best string players in London, and certainly they are good; their shows are very entertaining - and they definitely have style. But, there is as much attention paid to their figures in the videos as there is to their music. Hilary Hahn, Nicola Benedetti, and Tasmin Little are three amazing violinists. While all three are absolutely amazing to listen to, they also tend to be marketed with an eye toward their appearance - all of these ladies are lovely.
I guess this leads me to wonder, are women just that much better at music than men? Certainly all of the women mentioned above are very good musicians, but if they weren't also very good looking would they get the same attention? While I am pleased at the fame they have each achieved... what sort of message is it sending to the youth you might be interested in studying music???
Yet, the Electric String Quartet and Nicola Benedetti are getting huge amounts of press in the UK and packing the houses when they perform. While I've not been to a concert featuring Hilary Hahn, I am sure she is doing the same thing. Tasmin Little is less well known, but in her own circle garnering a following of music lovers of her own. So, maybe this isn't such a bad thing.
Kim Sun-wook is a pianist from Korea and often publicize with a boyish sex-appeal. Daniel Okulitch in "The Fly" spends a fair amount of time on stage naked which got as much press as his voice. Men aren't necessarily excluded from the flesh marketing in classical music.
I'm undecided as to whether I should be concerned about this trend in marketing of Contemporary Classical Music. On one hand it get people in the door and that's a good thing. On the other, it objectifies the body when it ought to be about the music. I haven't spoken with any of these performers to see how they feel, as to whether they feel their appearance has too much focus. - Maybe one of them will read this post and feel encouraged to comment....
Originally from Interchanging Idioms, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)
Thermostat
One of the more common avant-garde music kvetches is the seemingly disparately high public prominence of avant-garde painting compared to music. The usual explanation is temporal—a piece of music forces you to experience it over a given length of time, in a given order, but a painting is experienced on your own time, for as long as you want, lingering over whatever details you choose. (A while back, I speculated on the philosophical genealogy of this argued divide.) Personally? I've always found that explanation a bit suspect.
So it's an ego boost to find out that none other than Charles Baudelaire agrees with me. Kind of, anyways. Baudelaire made his initial splash as an art critic; in a long essay reviewing the Paris Salon of 1846, he rather infamously included a section explaining "Pourquoi la sculpture est ennuyeuse"—why sculpture is boring. Subject matter, mainly: Baudelaire was weary of sterile neo-classicism, an 18th-century holdover. (Baudelaire thus characterizes the sculptor Pradier: "He spends his life fattening ancient torsos, adjusting the coiffures atop their necks to those of kept women.") But sculpture itself suffers for being more primitive than painting.
La sculpture a plusieurs inconvénients qui sont la conséquence nécessaire de ses moyens. Brutale et positive comme la nature, elle est en même temps vague et insaisissable, parce qu’elle montre trop de faces à la fois. C’est en vain que le sculpteur s’efforce de se mettre à un point de vue unique; le spectateur, qui tourne autour de la figure, peut choisir cent points de vue différents, excepté le bon, et il arrive souvent, ce qui est humiliant pour l’artiste, qu’un hasard de lumière, un effet de lampe, découvrent une beauté qui n’est pas celle à laquelle il avait songé. Un tableau n’est que ce qu’il veut; il n’y a pas moyen de le regarder autrement que dans son jour. La peinture n’a qu’un point de vue; elle est exclusive et despotique: aussi l’expression du peintre est-elle bien plus forte.Baudelaire privileges painting over sculpture because there's less room for the spectator's subjectivity to interfere with the artist's intent.
Sculpture has numerous disadvantages which necessarily result from its means. Brutal and positive like nature, it is at other times vague and imperceptible, because it shows too many facets at once. It is in vain that the sculptor tries to put forth a unique point of view; the spectator, turning about the figure, might choose a hundred different points of view—all except the right one—and it often happens, which is a humiliation for the artist, that a trick of the light, an effect of the lamp, discovers a beauty not originally intended. A picture is only what it wants to be; there is no other way to regard it except on its own terms. Painting has one viewpoint; it is exclusive and despotic: thus the expression of the painter is that much more forceful.
You might think that Baudelaire's century-and-a-half remove from the current media landscape might invalidate his priorities, but consider that film, which is even more despotic than painting in Baudelaire's terms, ended up trumping both music and painting in terms of cultural market share. The progression is towards less room for the spectator to maneuver, not more. My new BFF Walter Benjamin quoted part of the above passage approvingly, commenting, "Baudelaire makes exactly the same point about sculpture from the perspective of painting as is made today about painting from the perspective of film." And yet the current cultural landscape—fractured into millions of self-serve niches via digital technology—seems to contradict that. What does that spectator really want? To be in control? Or to be controlled? Put it another way: does 21st-century culture privilege an objective viewpoint, or a subjective one?
When I was a kid, ingesting television culture like free Froot Loops, the main framework for thinking about media in general was still that promulgated by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s, particularly in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media. McLuhan famously divided media—or at least arranged them on a continuum—using categories of "hot" and "cold"; hot media included print, radio, and film, while cool media included the telephone, conversation, and, interestingly, television. Why put television and film into opposite categories? McLuhan's explanation is that hot media exclude audience participation, while cool media encourage it. Film fills in all the information the spectator needs—correlating with Benjamin's analysis vs. painting—but television presents a lower-resolution image, one that (unlike the distinct frames of film) is always in flux, lines of electrons continually scanning across the screen. For McLuhan, the increased effort needed to parse the image results in a tactile experience, the use of a greater number of sensory imaginations. (McLuhan pointed to the increased popularity of Westerns as evidence for this, the necessary presence of leather saddles, metal six-guns, horseflesh and dust dovetailing with the medium's increased tactile engagement.)
Um, okay. As interesting as that idea is, I sometimes wonder if McLuhan isn't reversing causality a bit, defining values as inherent to the medium that the medium is only reflecting. He would often point to politicians—Kennedy's successful use of TV, as opposed to Nixon or Goldwater or LBJ, all of whom were, in his analysis, too "hot" for television. From a 1969 Playboy interview:
MCLUHAN: Kennedy was the first TV President because he was the first prominent American politician to ever understand the dynamics and lines of force of the television iconoscope. As I've explained, TV is an inherently cool medium, and Kennedy had a compatible coolness and indifference to power, bred of personal wealth, which allowed him to adapt fully to TV. Any political candidate who doesn't have such cool, low definition qualities, which allow the viewer to fill in the gaps with his own personal identification, simply electrocutes himself on television—as Richard Nixon did in his disastrous debates with Kennedy in the 1960 campaign. Nixon was essentially hot; he presented a high-definition, sharply-defined image and action on the TV screen that contributed to his reputation as a phony—the "Tricky Dicky" syndrome that has dogged his footsteps for years. "Would you buy a used car from this man?" the political cartoon asked—and the answer was no, because he didn't project the cool aura of disinterest and objectivity that Kennedy emanated so effortlessly and engagingly.McLuhan's analysis is spot-on, but he doesn't consider, at least here, the possibility that society is driving the media and not the other way around. McLuhan is right to point out that the technology's ubiquity does have an effect on how we subsequently interact with the world, but the "coolness" of the medium may just be an artful illusion, one that caters to a societal need or wish, one that would have been utilized whatever the medium.
PLAYBOY: Did Nixon take any lessons from you the last time around?
MCLUHAN: He certainly took lessons from somebody, because in the recent election it was Nixon who was cool and Humphrey who was hot. I had noticed the change in Nixon as far back as 1963 when I saw him on The Jack Paar Show. No longer the slick, glib, aggressive Nixon of 1960, he had been toned down, polished, programed and packaged into the new Nixon we saw in 1968: earnest, modest, quietly sincere—in a word, cool. I realized then that if Nixon maintained this mask, he could be elected President, and apparently the American electorate agreed last November.
There's a bit of a linguistic elision here, too. McLuhan himself refers to Kennedy's "cool aura of disinterest and objectivity," careful to characterize that as an appearance, not necessarily a fact. But there has grown up around McLuhan's ideas the sense that cooler media are more objective, that the participatory aspect somehow ensures a greater objectivity. Within the regime of "hot" and "cool" media, subjectivity becomes an assault from without. Baudelaire's "despotic" viewpoint takes on all the negative aspects of a despot.
Last week, Nico Muhly was comparing molecular gastronomy and minimalist music:
When done right, molecular gastronomy can be unspeakably evocative. There is a drink at WD-50 which consists of tequila, dried thai long chilis, and smoked pear juice, which all sounds too cool for school, until you taste it. I got the tiniest sip down and was immediately reminded of the smell of an censer a friend of my mother had sent me when I was a child: it was a little pueblo house with a couple of poncho-clad figurines standing out front of it; this same friend later wrote a book in which she analyzed gruesome fin-de-siècle crime scene photographs of mutilated bodies in Paris; all of these memories were immediately available to me on first sip.This is a description of a McLuhanesque "cool" medium par excellence: presenting a surface that seems to need filling in. The idea that Romanticism appeals to universal stories that "we all can relate to" is a refraction through a society favoring ubiquitous, "participatory" media; Baudelaire would insist that the power of Romantic art is that you are irresistibly pulled into the artist's journey, an absolutely subjective viewpoint. But that's not to say that Romantic music has to be experienced in Baudelaire's terms; each generation reinvents the past for its own purposes. Nonetheless, it points up what we perceive today as a contrast: Romantic music presents a "subjective" surface, minimalist music an "objective" one.
Minimal composition, for me, should aspire to evoke similarly specific emotions; whereas Romantic music appeals to the Jungian journeys we “all” supposedly can relate to (the home, the woods, the lover, the villain), minimal music, for me, is unspecific in origin but specific and very personal in destination. You take six pitches, and oscillate between them in some sort of pattern, and one person in the audience remembers playing a broken pump organ, and another remembers a childhood spent playing underneath high-tension electric wires.
But then again, all music is more objective than subjective, especially if you take those terms a bit literally, to match Baudelaire's analysis: sculpture produces objects, and it's the "object"-ness of the sculpture that is the immediately perceived surface. Paintings are, of course, objects as well, but the immediately perceived surface of the painting is its subject, be that a figurative or an abstract subject. Music in general tends closer to sculpture than painting in that regard; the listener is left largely free to perceive a piece of music's status as a sonic object in time to whatever extent they wish, while even the most subjective compositional viewpoint leaves ample room for individual interpretation on the part of the listener. I caught a bit of Strauss's Don Quixote on the radio yesterday, one of the most programmatically pre-determined works in the repertoire, yet I was still struck by how much imaginative participation is invited from the listener on a moment-to-moment basis—yes, the cello is Don Quixote, but hearing that line, that phrase, what does it mean? What is he feeling at that point of the story? What are we?
Baudelaire's analysis of painting as what McLuhan would consider a "hot" medium is the exact opposite of the contrast of avant-garde painting with avant-garde music, which sets up painting as the "cool" medium, one in which the spectator retains control over the participatory apprehension of the artistic intent. Yet the experience of music remains so vague as to beg the question of which, in fact, is the more participatory medium. What if avant-garde music seems more forbidding to certain audience members than avant-garde painting because it requires too much participation, if, in McLuhan's terms, modern music really is too "cool" for school?
One more example, a tangential one. If you've watched any of the American coverage of the Olympics this month, you've been hit full-blast with NBC's penchant for human-interest background stories and endless dramaticizing hype. I'm not going to deny that it makes for good TV, but I do find it interesting that television, that supposedly "cool" medium, has taken what originated as an essentially neo-classical event—a spectacle of athletic competition, for which an in-person audience probably doesn't have very much sense of the competitors as individuals, except in isolated instances—and changed it into a rather Romantic artifact: hundreds of individual dramas of triumph, or redemption, or perseverance, or heartbreak, each of which provides pre-packaged water-cooler conversation fodder. The thing is, NBC presents this highly subjective interpretation of the games—dramatic structures and narratives imposed on the competition—with a highly objective veneer: reporters, interviews, an anchor's desk, medal counts, scores calculated to a thousandth of a point, times calculated to a thousandth of a second.
It would seem that we want the illusion of objectivity, but not the subsequent responsibility to fashion that objective data into our own subjective viewpoint. We want McLuhan's "cool" participation and Baudelaire's despotic force. We want the freedom to interpret, but the authoritarian confidence that we'll arrive at the "right" interpretation. But those wants are also in response to what society and technology present to us, and on some level, we remain unsatisfied, knowing that what's presented to us isn't entirely "true." Maybe that's why music, in spite of constantly seeming to finish second to this or that other artistic pursuit, persists with such tenacity.
Originally from Soho the Dog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)
Going to Extremes, or maybe not
1. Robert Gable announces a new online mix of audio tracks with the title the american minimalists. Mr. Gable notes that he avoided a number of tracks "due to reasons of length and/or extremism".2. The poet Ron Silliman announces the publication of a poem of ca. 1000 pages, The Alphabet, a work composed over a period of 29 years. He goes on to announce that "Now it’s time to turn my attention to trying a long poem, Universe."
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
Temporary Notes (6)
One of the first tricks many of us tried in an electronic music studio was recording something — preferably with a text — then reversing it, learning to perform the retrograde version, recording that, and finally reversing the retrograde recording so that you end up with something that has a clear resemblance to the original (forward) recording, but remade into something strange and disorienting. This is a species of variation made from accumulated errors in the transmission of information, but the errors here have a special character due to the fact that our perception of sounds is largely non-symmetrical with regard to time. (The same technique is used by some filmmakers, including Lynch and Scorsese, to disconcerting effect).*****
John Cage, in describing his own early Sonata for solo clarinet, a piece based on strict palindromes in both pitch and rhythm, criticized his own use of symmetry in the work as "indicat(ing) the absence of an idea". Indeed the presence of a symmetrical rhythm can often lead to precisely the same sort of leveling recently discussed on this page.
Messiaen's term for palindromic sequences of rhythmic values (which, to be honest, has always struck me as an awkward formulation) was non-retrogradable rhythm. What does a non-retrogradable rhythm accomplish? Either it is a instance with no real musical value, a transformation of a sequence of musical events with a net change of zero, i.e. an identity operation, within the rhythmic domain, or it is a transformation that somehow depends upon our non-symmetrical perception of time. If we have a sequence of eighth-quarter-quarter-eighth, in real performance, each note value is going to be quite distinct as each note is heard in a unique context, but taking it as a retrograde implies an erasure of any such distinction. To recover the distinction, the symmetry thus has to be violated in some way.
Morton Feldman, in his extraordinary essay (and in a series of works beginning a piece of the same title), Crippled Symmetry, calls attention to simple but rich techniques in which a symmetrical pattern is broken, for example by using a pitch sequence which is non-symmetrical to "color" (to use the medieval term) a symmetrical rhythm. Why are such techniques so effective? Or: What, precisely, is the utility of a symmetry if it is projected on a musical surface by materials that contradict that symmetry?
*****
A technique I have used several times, based upon a sequence of perfect card shuffles, includes a palindromic aspect, but rather than introducing the symmetry directly it is, instead, embedded in the shuffling process. Let's say we have a deck of eight cards, numbered 1 through 8. The deck at the beginning is ordered
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
To make a perfect shuffle, you have to cut the deck exactly in half, 1 2 3 4 & 5 6 7 8, and then shuffle the two halves back together perfectly:
5 1 6 2 7 3 8 4
Again, cut the deck in half and shuffle:
7 5 3 1 8 6 4 2
Again:
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
There's the retrograde! Again
4 8 3 7 2 6 1 5
Again:
2 4 6 8 1 3 5 7
And back again to the beginning:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Now with a small deck, the process is brief and rather transparent, but with ever larger decks, the process gets more interesting, and as it goes through each shuffle, the original sequence — in my usage, it's usually a tune of some sort — is, in effect, comb filtered and laid over itself so that one hears a shadow of the original melody which has been halved in two different ways — split down the middle and slowed to half the tempo.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
Music Fonts, a Quiz
Identify the treble clefs (above, in a random order, click to enlarge) from 14 different music fonts. These are, in alphabetical order, Engraver, Feta, Fughetta, Helsinki, Inkpen, Jazz, Maestro, Opus, Petrucci, Reprise, Sonata, STocatta, Tufa, Turandot.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
Materialism / Immaterialism
$80,451,178Hooray for Christie's. They've now sold some water lilies for the above sum. Monet's Le bassin aux nympheas went for double the previous record for a Monet, his Le Pont du chemin de fer a Argenteuil, sold not long ago. I guess in the digital era, originals are even more valuable to many. Interestingly--but not surprisingly--Russian and Middle Eastern oil magnates are the top buyers, replacing hedge funds.
In the world of invisible networks, Tim Risher's Second Life performance space is ready for shows. Email him if you're a composer or performer interested in playing.
Originally from Sound and Space, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
Sadness And Now Maybe Some Money [But Deferred Beauty] In The Former Jewels In The Crown Of The Former Czarist Russian Empire And Former Soviet Union
Mr. Barack Obama today, August 19, 2008, called for $1 billion in reconstruction aid for the Republic of Georgia, Future European Union [if not necessarily Future NATO].Any chance of any "Marshall Plan" aid for Ukraine, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Armenia?
[Click on images for enlargements.]
The Government House of Abkhazia, in Sukhumi [above], de facto independent Republic/Autonomous Region within Republic of Georgia, destroyed in the Abkhaz offensive on September 27, 1993, still stands in ruins. The offensive involved the ethnic cleansing of Georgians. The photo was taken in 2006. The population of Abkhazia, in 2004, was approximately 180,000. The Republic/Autonomous Region borders the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, in Sochi, Russian Federation. [The ports of Novorossiysk and Sukhumi: potential future homes of the Russian Federation Black Sea Fleet?]
Sevastopol, Special Administrative District of Ukraine [middle] is a port city located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Autonomous Republic of Ukraine. It has a population of 328,600 (2004). Former home of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, the city is now a naval base shared by the Russian and Ukrainian Navy. The Russian Federation lease on the Naval Port is scheduled to end in 2017. [NATO recently made an abortive attempt to modernize a decaying military facility in Eastern Crimea, but was blocked by opposition by Ukrainian citizen groups. The majority of Ukrainians, unlike Georgians, oppose membership in NATO. The President of Ukraine supports membership in NATO.]
Sochi, Russian Federation [below] is a resort city situated just north of the southern Russian border. It sprawls along the shores of the Black Sea against the background of the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. At 145 km (90 mi), Greater Sochi is claimed to be the longest city in Europe. In 2006, the population was estimated to be 395,000. Home of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
*
Photo credits: Vyacheslav Stepanyuchenko and Wikipedia Commons. With thanks.
Originally from Renaissance Research, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
Musical Ambassadors...
For those who frequent the calendar section of PhilipGlass.com, you may have noticed that the Sejong Soloists, in the middle of its international tour, performed music from "la Belle et la Bete" in North Korea yesterday. I wonder how the music was received.
(Dan discovered that in fact Sejong played in South Korea, thanks to the folks at Chester Novello for confusing the two countries. The curiousity remains about how the music was received.)
Originally posted by Richard Guerin from Glass Notes, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
BBC Visionaries
"Is Philip Glass the most visionary?" This is the question the BBC poses in its 7 week series during which each week it pits one "visionary" composer from each era against another.
Bach v Handel
Beethoven v Mozart
Chopin v Verdi
Shostakovich v Takemitsu
Boulez v Glass
Then winners will be announced according to fan voting. There are little vignettes about each composer. Please go to the link and vote with conviction for whoever your favorite composer is. It begins airing on BBC August 30th (BBC World News in the US). By my calculations the Glass profile will be aired on the American East Coast Week 5, September 27 (6:30am, 9:30am, 4:30pm,10:30pm)
Below are the links:
BBC Visionaries
BBC World News Schedules
Originally posted by Richard Guerin from Glass Notes, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
Does exposure matter?
Last week the University of Amsterdam issued a press release on the results of our study on musical competence and the role of exposure (to be published in an upcoming issue of JEP:HPP). I didn’t expect it to have too much impact, but it is surprising to see how many news sites simply copied the text of the original release: "Researchers at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have demonstrated how much the brain can learn simply through active exposure to many different kinds of music. The common view among music scientists is that musical abilities are shaped mostly by intense musical training, and that they remain rather rough in untrained listeners, the so-called Expertise hypothesis. However, the UvA-study shows that listeners without formal musical training, but with sufficient exposure to a certain musical idiom (the Exposure hypothesis), perform similarly in a musical task when compared to formally trained listeners. Furthermore, the results show that listeners generally do better in their preferred musical genre. As such the study provides evidence for the idea that some musical capabilities are acquired through mere exposure to music."My compliments, therefore, to those journalists who actually read the publication and gave their own perspective on the results, such as Wired, WN.com and Wissenschaft Actuel.
Originally from Music Matters, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)
Who Needs a Label
...when you have stuff like this:
When listening to this music you should keep in mind artists such as Frederic Chopin, Cat Power, Keith Jarrett, Talk Talk, and Chris Whitley -- unless you don't know any [of] them or are not a fan, in which case you should keep in mind Nick Drake, The National, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, and other, trendier bands whose music has recently appeared in car commercials.
That said, I am totally holding out for a hero.
But seriously, is trading in category labels for genealogies of influence a practical alternative to the genre tag in an Internet age?
Originally from Mind the Gap, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)
On the road
“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there"
“Where are we going man?”
“I don’t know but we gotta go.”
The cover of the Penguin Classic edition of On the Road uses a detail from 'The Athletes Dream' by Larry Rivers from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. More Kerouac here, and support other music blogs here and here.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)
Realpolitik.
The Bard Music Festival at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts
The New York Times, August 19, 2008
Originally posted by NightAfterNight from Night After Night, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)
BBC Proms 2008 review: a challenge too far - Telegraph.co.uk
BBC Proms 2008 review: a challenge too far Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom - The trouble is that the music loses most of its point that way. As the pianist looks on after his opening flourishes, it seems as though the composer has ... |
Originally from lutoslawski OR xenakis OR boulez OR Dutilleux OR ligeti OR "elliott carter" OR stockhausen OR "steve reich" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)
BBCSSO/Volkov - guardian.co.uk
BBCSSO/Volkov guardian.co.uk, UK - ... the UK premiere of Elliott Carter's Soundings. Composed three years ago as a leaving present for Daniel Barenboim when he stepped down as music director ... |
Originally from lutoslawski OR xenakis OR boulez OR Dutilleux OR ligeti OR "elliott carter" OR stockhausen OR "steve reich" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)
David Fanning reviews the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra ... - Telegraph.co.uk
David Fanning reviews the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra ... Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom - This is, in effect, a three-movement concerto for orchestra, the added twist being the relationship between speech and music realised by modifying the ... |
Originally from lutoslawski OR xenakis OR boulez OR Dutilleux OR ligeti OR "elliott carter" OR stockhausen OR "steve reich" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
Reunited Tashi honors Messiaen - Chicago Sun-Times
Reunited Tashi honors Messiaen Chicago Sun-Times, United States - To celebrate the Olivier Messiaen centennial and the 35th year of its own debut, the revered new-music ensemble reunited this year to give a handful of ... |
Originally from lutoslawski OR xenakis OR boulez OR Dutilleux OR ligeti OR "elliott carter" OR stockhausen OR "steve reich" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
Recording "background noise"
I'm looking for recommendations for an audio recorder that is can make reasonably high quality recordings of background noises -- plane engines, waves, traffic, the rustling of trees, people walking, bicycle wheels spinning, etc. Cheaper would be preferable as I am a student on a limited budget. Thanks in advance for helping!Originally from Forum - NetNewMusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
NetNewMusic Last.fm Group Started
I just started a group at Last.fm for us. We've got these great posts about what people are listening to, and I thought it'd be interesting and fun for any Last.fm members who are also NetNewMusic participants to see our communal listening lists. NetNewMusic Group at Last.fm For those that aren't familiar with Last.fm it's a social network of sorts, I've been using for about 4 years that collects information about what you listen to (with your permission). It's a plugin that works with WinAmp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. and communicates each track you listen to, back to the Last.fm server. (You can see last night was heavy on the Chopin for us - we were sitting in the dark and drinking wine waiting for our storm nightmare to pass). Anyways, check it out if you're interested and if you're not a member maybe consider installing the plugin.Originally from Forum - NetNewMusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
Favorite Unrecognized Composers
I guess for the first round they should not be alive. I have a thing for the French Organ Composer Jehan Alain. He only lived to be 29 but i dare say he is one of the gretest. It is this great combination of humor and sinister. Just what you want from the pipe organOriginally from Forum - NetNewMusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
Black market avant-garde - Zawya
Black market avant-garde Zawya, United Arab Emirates - On March 29, 2008, local authorities from the prefecture of Casablanca seized and destroyed 80000 pirated discs, including music, computer-programming ... |
Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
David Byrne Talks Godhead - Beliefnet.com
 Beliefnet.com | David Byrne Talks Godhead Beliefnet.com, NY - If Byrne and his bandmates were attracted to Christian music and artwork (as in the cover art by Christian outsider artist Howard Finster for their 1986 ... |
Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood also writes for chamber orchestra - San Jose Mercury News
Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood also writes for chamber orchestra San Jose Mercury News, USA - A: It's the way they integrate different styles, the rock influences, the electronica stuff and the clear influence of the 20th-century avant garde; ... |
Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
Soprano back for Flowering debut - WA today
 WA today | Soprano back for Flowering debut WA today, Australia - "I have always been a fan of contemporary classical music of which John Adams is an iconic figure," she said. "Having looked at the score of A Flowering ... |
Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
New Dettingen Te Deum
Originally from Ionarts, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 20, 2008 at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2008
Ionarts at Large: Wall of Horns at the Munich Opera Festival 2008
Originally from Ionarts, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)
Mirian Conti plays Benjamin Lees
Mirian Conti
Lees Piano Music, 1947 - 2005
Toccata Classics
Toccata, Six Ornamental Etudes, Three Preludes, Sonata Breve, Odyssey
Benjamin Lees’ piano music can be muscular and powerful, sweet and tender, or lilting and playful. Miriam Conti handily tackles each and every possible mood in the five pieces on this disc. The opening Toccata is brash and forceful with a surprising loss of energy towards the end. The Six Ornamental Etudes are charming pieces that, while not as showy as other etude collections, still balance the fine line of chop-builder vs. showpiece. The Three Preludes follow a traditional fast-slow-fast structure and a large-scale narrative shape that makes the set feel more like a single multi-movement work than a collection of separate pieces. Sonata Breve packs an awful lot of music and technique into a work containing the word breve in the title. Each of the three Odyssey’s are mature, broad, and expansive works that showcase Miriam Conti’s talents quite well (the last two of the three were composed for her, after all).
Lees’ pitch language has that chromatic-yet-tonally-grounded sense of Prokofiev mixed with just a touch of the American Populists from the mid-20th century. In many ways, I think Lees’ music is what Elliott Carter’s music would sound like had he not gone all wonky in the 50s (disclaimer: I love wonky Carter). Each work has a strong rhythmic and narrative profile, and thunderous moments are well balanced by tender contemplation. Miriam Conti’s technique and musicality are mercurial and able to match the demands of each piece without question.
Originally posted by Jay Batzner from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)
À mon chevet: The Breast
Originally from Ionarts, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)
Proms 38 and 40: BBC SO/Boulez and West Eastern Divan/Barenboim at ... - Times Online
Proms 38 and 40: BBC SO/Boulez and West Eastern Divan/Barenboim at ... Times Online, UK - This was music-making by people who know the meaning of turbulence - and, consequently, the value of serenity. Introducing the sumptuously played encore, ... |
Originally from lutoslawski OR xenakis OR boulez OR Dutilleux OR ligeti OR "elliott carter" OR stockhausen OR "steve reich" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)
Prom 40, BBCSO/Boulez - guardian.co.uk
Prom 40, BBCSO/Boulez guardian.co.uk, UK - Yet there was the sense that he was keeping the music at arm's length, as if intrigued by its individuality rather than convinced of its importance, ... |
Originally from lutoslawski OR xenakis OR boulez OR Dutilleux OR ligeti OR "elliott carter" OR stockhausen OR "steve reich" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)
Arts Briefs - Montgomery Advertiser
Arts Briefs Montgomery Advertiser, AL - 24, will comprise a bite-size program with a friendly balance of classical and more modern music. There's a horn trio by Brahms and Ligeti along with the ... |
Originally from lutoslawski OR xenakis OR boulez OR Dutilleux OR ligeti OR "elliott carter" OR stockhausen OR "steve reich" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)
University Of California Berkeley Music Composition Rebuilds From Tragedy By Hiring Students Of Gerard Grisey And Sir Harrison Birtwistle (And Others)
This autumn, younger composers Franck Bedrossian and Ken Ueno are joining Edmund Champion, Cindy Cox, and David Wessel as composers on the Music Department faculty of the University of California at Berkeley.There will be no Visiting Ernest Bloch Lecturer in music, at Berkeley, in the Fall of 2008.
[Click on images for enlargements.]
Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Today the library holds autograph scores of Sir Arthur Bliss, Ernest Bloch, Luigi Dallapiccola, Darius Milhaud, Roger Sessions, and Randall Thompson, among many others. There are countless Ernest Bloch letters and the files of the WPA's California Folk Music Project.
Photo credit: Copyright © 2008 The Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved. Ernest Bloch's 'Macbeth', by Alex Cohen © 1938 Oxford University Press.
*
Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers [including Bloch], by Walter Simmons. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004.
First in a series of six studies which will also cover American neo-classicists, American opera composers, American nationalists and populists, three traditionalists of the Juilliard School, and American traditionalists of the post-1930 generation.
Originally from Renaissance Research, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
The state of choral music
I was asked to write something about the “state of choral music,” a quite wide topic, and it’s either think about this or get to work on my taxes, so…
My first thoughts are about choral music in the USA vs. orchestral music. Choral music is a distant stepchild compared with orchestral music. This is not true in some other places, where choral music is far stronger, and where professional choruses have been established for centuries. But in the US, professional choruses have only come about, on the whole for the last 30 years or so, and only proliferated in the last decade and a half.
So I wonder why choral music takes such a back seat to orchestral music here. Here are some possible reasons:
Orchestras are so much more professional - ie, there’s a higher quality of performance.
Choral music takes more work to listen to: there’s text to deal with, poetry, whereas with an orchestra you can just listen to great sounds.
Because there’s no text, orchestral music can mean different things to each listener, so we aren’t “stuck” with the text’s/poet’s message.
Orchestral music is more colorful than choral music because there are so many different instruments. (This would mean that orchestral music is more interesting than string quartets.)
Are any of these true? Are all of these true?
Before I go further with this, I wonder what you think about this. And I wonder if you have some additional reasons why orchestral music is so much more respected and so much more popular.
I have to add here that part of the “respect” is that one can’t play in a professional orchestra without years of training, but “anyone can sing.” But that doesn’t explain popularity. Why is symphonic music more popular than choral music? Or is it?
Originally posted by David from David Griggs-Janower, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
Nico Muhly’s many ‘Tongues’
Nico Muhly is an innovative modern composer getting good press:
The first vocal lines of the young composer Nico Muhly’s new album, “Mothertongue,” are seemingly arbitrary lists of numbers and addresses. Sung by ethereal mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer over aching strings and a distorted sub-bass synthesizer, the arrangement feels like a Stockhausen gag; a misdirection that subverts your expectations about how the work might move you. For Muhly, however, there’s poetry in all that data.
Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
AMN Podcast: A Slow Rip - For the Time Being
A Slow Rip
“Devil in the Well” (mp3)
from “For the Time Being”
(Endgame Records)
More On This Album
Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
New Release of Elliott Carter Chamber Music
A new release from 2L:
For this album of music by Elliott Carter, on GRAMMY award-nominated Norwegian label 2L, cellist Johannes Martens has assembled some of Norway’s foremost young musicians. Tracing Carter’s development through some of his most creative periods, these works - from the beautiful 1946 Elegy and the celebrated Cello Sonata from 1948 through to newer pieces for solo instruments, duo, trio and string quartet - constitute nearly a cross-section of musical evolution in the 20th century’s second half.
Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
Getting our marriage license
Daniel and I are getting married this week.
This morning we went to the Beverly Hills Courthouse and got our marriage license. It was a funny trip. As I came out of the elevator, I glanced to the right and just like the DMV, there was a big sign pointing us to get in line for marriage licenses. So, I went right over as there was no one in line. Then Daniel yelled to me from across the room pointing out that I needed to go through the metal detector first. It was low pressure, so no one arrested me for making the mistake. As I walked over to the area, I walked past a group of people waiting for the elevator. “I wanna marry HIM” said a male voice in the group. I didn’t look assuming he wasn’t talking about me.
We stripped and got through the metal detector and went back to the license line. “NEXT” the voice shouted and I went up to the window. “Roger, it’s not your turn” Daniel calmly said to me. I was oblivious that someone was standing in front of me.
Was I nervous? A hopeless Sagittarian trying to reach his goal as fast as possible?
Finally we went to the window. A friendly black woman helped us with the signatures and made us swear that the information was correct. “And don’t sign until I tell you to” she said emphatically. Too late: I had already signed. She sighed: “Well, I’ll have to print out another copy.” She disappeared and Daniel continued to be patient and loving. After all, we were getting married soon. She returned and told us to wait for 30 minutes while she got the license ready.
Daniel had a business call to make so he disappeared outside. I sat alone on a big couch in the Beverly Hills Courthouse waiting for our license, checking my email on my iPhone.
“I’d like to marry YOU” a voice suddenly said in front of me. I looked up and saw a 50-something year old man in shorts and a T-shirt staring at me. He was not particularly handsome but looked like a friendly chap.
“You are my perfect type: 6 foot 2; graying, older than I am, blue eyes (I tried to interrupt) and handsome.” I blushed. “Your friend is not my type: too young. Look here”–– he showed me a well worn picture of a hunky young guy––your friend can have my ex and the WE can get married. Look, I’ve got $30,000 dollars.” He opened up his fanny pack and pulled out a wad of rubber-banded money to tempt me. This seemed very funny. Was he bribing me? Was this his dowery? I smiled at him: “I’m already taken, but you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding someone.” “Yes, but you are perfect. Won’t your friend let me marry you?” Seeing that Daniel had just hung up, I encouraged him to go ask him himself. Then Daniel appeared in the lobby and a voice came over the public address system: “Roger and Daniel, your marriage license is ready.” The man knew it wasn’t going to happen and walked away.
This weekend we’ll be having a small civil ceremony with a friend who has a license to marry people. If the California Proposition #8 is defeated in November, then we will have a ceremony/party next year to celebrate our fifteen years of being together and our first year as a married couple.
Originally posted by Roger Bourland from rogerbourland.com, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
12 KLEINE PRÆLUDIEN (2006)
A small advertisement for my own music: I've just got round to assembling a complete PDF file of my 12 KLEINE PRÆLUDIEN (2006) a compositional project somewhat associated with my new music blogging. This collection of 12 pieces — with two alternatives as circumstances require — is intended, cheerfully, for domestic music making. The collection may be played in whole or in parts, and if played in whole, I prefer the printed circle of fifths order, beginning with Ab and ending with C#. The premise here is the notion that a prelude is a cadence elevated to a minor epiphany. Feel free to download it here.Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
why we need beethoven?
from the Orange County Register, Critic Tim Mangan, posts H.L Mencken's argument that exposure to great art can uplift the ignorant masses. From an article reporting on the Scopes Trial, by H.L Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, June 29, 1925: What all this amounts to is that the human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera — a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them. The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only. The majority has no more to do with it than it has to do with ecclesiastic politics on Mars. In so far as that heritage is apprehended, it is viewed with enmity. But in the main it is not apprehended at all. That is why Beethoven survives. Of the 110,000,000 so-called human beings who now live in the United States, flogged and crazed by Coolidge, Rotary, the Ku Klux Klan and the newspapers, it is probable that at least 108,000,000 have never heard of him at all. To these immortals, made in God’s image, one of the greatest artists the human race has ever produced is not even a name. So far as they are concerned he might as well have died at birth. The gorgeous and incomparable beauties that he created are nothing to them. They get no value out of the fact that he existed. They are completely unaware of what he did in the world, and would not be interested if they were told. The fact saves good Ludwig’s bacon. His music survives because it lies outside the plane of the popular apprehension, like the colors beyond violet or the concept of honor. If it could be brought within range, it would at once arouse hostility. Its complexity would challenge; its lace of moral purpose would affright. Soon there would be a movement to put it down, and Baptist clergymen would range the land denouncing it, and in the end some poor musician, taken in the un-American act of playing it, would be put on trial before a jury of Ku Kluxers, and railroaded to the calaboose. – quoted in The Impossible H.L. Mencken, edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers to me these arguments smack of the cultural imperialism and illuminates the"red state, blue state" arguments that are so common today. as i pointed out in my comments on mangan's blog, knowing beethoven doesn't seem to have done anything to enlighten condi rice, don rumsfeld and robert mcnamara. maybe if they had been familiar with monteverdi and busonello's "coronation of poppea" where "absolute power corrupts absolutely" david ocker also makes some good points along those lines on his blog mixed metersOriginally from Forum - NetNewMusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
"I will never be able to write like that"
The music I envy -- or, rather, the writing of which I envy -- falls into two categories. There is the music that is so advanced that I think: "I will never be smart enough to write music like this." Dutillieux makes me feel like this. Schoenberg. Then there is the music that is simple, clear and unmysterious, but still possessing an arresting and unnameable quality. Kurtag, for example, makes a mystic out of me. The power of his music is so much more than the notes on the page. This music makes me think: "I can write like this any day of the week." But I can't. Yet. What would you put in these categories? Are there other categories for you? Who do you try to imitate? And how's that working out for you? And what do you think that ineffable quality is? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVFp1n_eZpwOriginally from Forum - NetNewMusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
Musical Olympians
Though there seems to be a world of difference between what athletes, particularly Olympian athletes, do and what practicing musicians do, we actually have a lot in common. Perhaps the main difference is that what musicians do is mostly enjoyed by the ear and what Olympic athletes do is mostly enjoyed by the eye. What musicians do, especially musicians who play "classical" music, is to line up pre-designated patterns of notes, rhythms, and dynamics, and perform them in a meaningful way. What athletes do is to line up pre-designated motions, and perform them in a way that creates the most speed and the most power with the least amount of physical effort, allowing the physical effort that they use to be the thing that lets them excel and break speed records. Musicians, especially string players, use their fingers, arms, and hands to try to do the same thing. We don't propel our bodies anywhere, but we do use a similar approach to the physical aspects of playing, particularly when it comes to form and efficiency of motion.Rhythm plays a great part in athletics, as does phrasing. Measuring out the length of a course or of a pool and knowing how to divide up the ultimate time you are going for as a swimmer or as a runner, is a kind of phrasing. Rhythm is of vital importance to gymnastics and diving, particularly synchronized diving, where the pairs of divers communicate their initial tempo in a way that the "go" of 1, 2, 3, go is not cadential. The end of the complicated rhythmic phrase that they hold in their heads, which includes rhythms for all kinds of flips and twists, is their synchronized arrival in the water.
I feel that my daily hour or two (or maybe three) of Olympic viewing during this past week has been well spent. I am grateful that all I need to do is to control very small parts of my body in order to be able to do what I want to do. It is an awful lot easier (and an awful lot less dangerous) than flipping around in the air or on a set of high bars.
I really enjoy it when the gold medal winners at the Olympics are awarded by a rendition of the national anthem (as arranged by Peter Breiner) of their country, particularly when I see them sing along, or when I see their eyes well up with tears at the top of a phrase.
Originally from Musical Assumptions, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
i love the 80s
Speaking of divas on the cusp of their second half-century of life, Madonna turned 50 this past weekend. That reminds La Cieca of a kinder if not gentler time when MTV was actually pretty cool, as this spoof promo from the era demonstrates.
Originally posted by La Cieca from parterre box presents La Cieca, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
The best composer of our times?
'The best composer of our times is Ernest Bloch' - Pablo Casals
As the string quartets of John Cage, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Elliott Carter enjoy critical attention one wonders whether Ernest Bloch's main stylistic error was to have been born in Switzerland. With some justification Casals can be criticised for ignoring modern music, and he once unashamedly said 'I have finally come to a definite conclusion: I will have nothing to do with what is called "contemporary music"'. But Casals' opinion of Bloch was shared by another great cellist, Colin Hampton, who, as a member of the famous Griller Quartet, was part of the classic 1954 recording of the Bloch Quartets seen above. Hampton unequivocally endorsed Casals' view writing that '(Bloch's) string quartet No 1 is to me one of the great works in this world. It was a logical conclusion, as far as I am concerned, to the Beethoven quartets. I would put Bloch in front of Schubert and Brahms anytime.'
Read more on the Bloch Quartets here, and, yes, I know the composer took American citizenship in 1924. Meet another neglected Swiss born composer here. And, no, it's not Arthur Honegger, who was also championed by Casals. And are thirteen forward-looking twentieth-century string quartets neglected simply because the composer was a woman?
Lone voices showcases music not featured in the 2008 BBC Proms, discover more lone voices here. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)
Lone voices - Peter Maxwell Davies
Many people think of Peter Maxwell Davies as a Scottish composer, but in fact he was born in Salford in Lancashire. And I'm adding to the confusion by featuring a CD of his music titled A Celebration of Scotland for the simple reason that it contains some of the most beautiful music ever captured on disc. The riches are too many to list. But for starters try the haunting Farewell to Stromness and Yesnaby Ground for solo piano played by Max, the ravishing Lullabye for Lucy sung by the Choir of St. Mary's Music School, Edinburgh, and the extrovert An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise complete with George McIlwham playing the highland bagpipes.
Originally released as a Unicorn-Kanchana vinyl LP in 1988, A Celebration of Scotland was captured in stunning sound in the Queen's Hall, Edinburgh by recording engineer Antony Howell. It, thankfully, remains available as a CD, snap it up while you can. And this post brings a neat symmetry to the path as we are off to Scotland (where we lived for six years in the 1980s) after hearing Jordi Savall and Rolf Lislevand in this evening's Snape Prom. So I'll be celebrating Scotland (and Sufism at the Edinburgh Festival) instead of blogging for a few days. More on Scottish musical connections in Farewell to Stromness.
Lone voices showcases music not featured in the 2008 BBC Proms, discover more lone voices here. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)
SatPod: Higher, Faster, Stronger
Yes, I've been watching the Olympics. Michael Phelps is incredible!1. "Move On Up a Little Higher" by Brewster/Davis, performed by Mahalia Jackson.
2. "Chorus: Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe" from Christmas Oratorio by J.S. Bach, performed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus Wien.
3. Concerto for horn (1950), "II. Very Fast", by Paul Hindemith, performed by Dennis Brain.
4. Festal Brass with Blues, "I. Fast" and "III. Fast" by Michael Tippett, performed by The Wallace Collection.
5. "Life in the Fast Lane" by the Eagles on Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. II.
6. "IV. Very Fast, Tempo Di Funk" from Piano Trio by Daniel Schnyder, performed by Zurcher Klaviertrio.
7. "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" by John Adams, performed by a) Edo De Waart and the San Francisco Symphony, b) Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
8. "2. Very Fast" from Variation Movements by Robert Henderson, performed by Terry Everson and Susan Nowicki.
9. "2. Die Welt wird wieder neu; Phoebus eilt mit schnellen Pferden" from the Wedding Cantata (no. 202) by J.S. Bach, performed by Kathleen Battle with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and James Levine.
10. "II. Scherzo. Schnelle Vierteln" from Symphony No. 10 by Gustav Mahler, performed by Eliahu Inbal/Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt.
11. "Love is Stronger than Justice (The Munificent Seven)" by Sting on Ten Summoner's Tales.
12. "Chorale - Was Menschenkraft" from St. Mark's Passion by J.S. Bach, performed by The Choir Of Gonville And Caius College, Cambridge.
13. "IV. Mäflig schnell, kraftvoll" from Concert Music for Piano, Brass and Harps, Op. 49 by Paul Hindemith, performed by John Wallace, trumpet, Radoslav Kvapil, piano, The Wallace Collection.
14. "I. Mit kraft" from Trumpet Sonata by Paul Hindemith, performed by Wynton Marsalis.
15. "I. Kraftig; Entschieden" from Symphony No. 3 by Gustav Mahler, performed by James Levine with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
16. "III. Scherzo: Kräftig, Nicht Zu Schnell" from Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler, performed by Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Originally from Musical Perceptions, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)
Another off-brand instrument revival (kazoos, too)
The accordion is making a comeback, according to the Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-accordion18-2008aug18,0,3759870.story
And, in a spirited attempt to kick-start a kazoo revival, the memorably big-haired Temple City Kazoo Orchestra in a 1970s Merv Griffin Show appearance, playing "Kazoo sprach Zarathustra:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T75MC69N2IU
Originally from Letter V, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
