aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks :: this post title unavailable due to ipod wash woes

Since we recovered my iPod from the wash cycle, I'm struggling to track what I've been listening to. The iPod works except for the display and sometimes when syncing. My response has been to load it with John Cage music and let 'er rip. But often I have no clue what I've actually heard. It's debatable if this is an issue with said composer.

My overall reaction to all this Cage is to seek out music even more unconventional than Cage. I'm open to suggestion but even after a bout of Xenakis, I can't find anything.

Histories and Theories of Intermedia, in a post on Tony Conrad, happens to speak on why it's tough to top Cage at his own game:

Conrad saw contemporary music as being at a crisis point. John Cage's radicalism, and Young's Fluxus verbal scores (listening to butterflies as a piece of music) indicated music being dismantled in an unsurpassably extreme manner

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Note that next week, I plan to replace my 3.1GB of Cage on the crippled iPod with the music of Terry Riley. No conclusions yet although be forewarned it could result in a who owns the sixties post.

links for 2008-05-09

• Leonard Link: New Sounds Live: Bimstein & Muhly at Merkin Hall
  "Muhly's great attraction is the enthusiastic experimentalism of his work, the sense of trying out things because it would be fun to hear."
• Amazon.com: The Last Camel In Paris: MP3 Downloads: Terry Riley
  "Price: $9.99" for one track. Of course, that track is 54 minutes long.

links for 2008-05-08

• Brian Sacawa | Sounds Like Now » Blog Archive » Mobtown Modern top 6
  "Four bari saxes. At the same time." !
• The Reverberate Hills; or The Apotheosis of the Narwhal: Go, lovely rose
  "I heard the West Coast premiere of Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince, while surrounded by a noisy, inattentive audience – oh, not the many, many children...just the usual moronic, rude adults who think everyone wants to hear them talking during musi
• Brian Dickie : Piano Dress
  "Sanford Sylvan - the only veteran on the stage. And veteran indeed - he was the first Chou en Lai in Nixon in China in 1987"

links for 2008-05-07

• Eastmp’s top artists channel | Last.fm + YouTube = music tv goodness
  "What's This? This is a mashup of Last.fm and YouTube made by Tim Bormans. It’s best described as an online music television based on your taste." LCD Soundsystem and Bruce Brubaker so far for user eastmp.
• A VC: The CBS Digital Radio Network
  "They have rolled out the entire spectrum of what radio might be on one single player...If ... Wilco is playing in the WXRT studio, the CBS digital radio network can alert you in the AOL stream and give you one click access to the Wilco live performance."

links for 2008-05-06

• True Film: 800 CDS
  "Part documentary and part how-to. A struggling musician uses his PC to produce his own album and winds up with a stack of 800 CDs in his apartment...There's no formula....it's all about tapping into the inner authentic you"
• hypebot: Out Of Print CD's Get New Life Via Amazon On Demand
  Mancini? Cake? Ok...
• SYMPHONY REVIEW: Dulled Impact By Jason Victor Serinus (California Symphony, Oakland Symphony Chorus, Contra Costa County Children's Chorus Honors Choir, Keith Phares, Tyler S. Nelson, Kiera Duffy, Barry Jekowsky, May 4, 2008)
  "But as someone who was born in Manhattan...I swear on my Katz’ Delicatessen kosher pastrami sandwich that Bates offered the tamest, least clattery subway ride in the shortest string of cars I have ever ridden in."
• Seth's Blog: Avoiding the Passion Pop Gulf
  "Jazz. If you do atonal world jazz played in the dark underwater, few people will come...This is a second market...the market of pop. These are the folks who go to the Olive Garden for a nice italian meal instead of the authentic place down the street."
• From the Leadership Music Digital Conference: Millennials and Mass Media
  "A millennial may hear about an artist through viral marketing, or get a song sent via IM, or have a link emailed from a friend, but mass media gets the ball rolling for much of the music discovery that exists in mainstream America."
• Bit Player : Los Angeles Times : How much should music cost?
  "ABKCO is moving the other direction, pulling its collection of vintage...Rolling Stones albums from eMusic after only one month...the strong response to the Stones' releases persuaded someone that eMusic was undercutting higher margin outlets"

links for 2008-05-05

• HurdAudio: Playing Through the Music of Bob Dylan
  "Jewels and Binoculars takes the music of Bob Dylan and turns it into beautifully lyrical pieces for a trio of improvisers."
• YouTube - Jewels and Binoculars - Dark Eyes
  "They made three cds from 2001 to 2006 focusing on "jazz" reinterpretations of Bob Dylan compositions."
• YouTube - Jewels and Binoculars in Humboldt
• YouTube - Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone 1966
• questions about composing from james combs « david’s waste of bandwidth
  "Makes me wonder if the music of Ives or Scelsi or Nancarrow might have received earlier and more widespread listeners had the Internet existed in their eras."

links for 2008-05-04

• Histories and Theories of Intermedia: BETWEEN DUCHAMP AND TURING: Strategies for Linkage Between the Visual and the Auditive in Audio-Visual Art, David Sudmalis
  "Terms other than Duchamp and Turing could be invoked to describe these extreme, opposed ends of the creative spectrum. Modernist v postmodernist, concept v method, Cagian v Boulezian, holistic v parametric may be considered as substitutes at the ready."
• Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner » Blog Archive » A note on Copland’s setting of "I Bought me a Cat"
  "at the end of the very last stanza (”I bought me a wife”), he’d clap his hands not the two times the listener expected but, all of a sudden, three times, with an emphatic accent on the third clap, and only then go on to the valedictory tagline.'
• AfriClassical: The Young Eight Will Perform in New York State on May 8, 9 & 12
  "The Young Eight, http://www.theyoungeight.com, America’s only African-American string octet, will present three concerts in New York State which are free and open to the public, on May 8, 9 and 12"
• Histories and Theories of Intermedia: Semiotics of the Kitchen, Martha Rosler
  "On a counter before her are a variety of utensils, each of which she picks up, names and proceeds to demonstrate, but with gestures that depart from the normal uses of the tool. "

Cartridge Music (1960). John Cage /huh?/

I like lots of the music of John Cage and I understand the need to experience music versus being judgmental about it. But, Cartridge Music in particular strikes me as bizarre. I can appreciate the diverse sounds and even the playing of Heart's Magic Man in the background, but the short vocal is painful and the most unnatural part of the piece. Here's the YouTube clip:

From Richard Kostelanetz's Conversations with Cage:

The piece we're setting up now [Cartridge Music] uses electronics, but it also uses junk things that are part and parcel of everyday life. We have a complex situation with three performers, and objects with cartridges and contact microphones. We enter a situation that resembles people trying to get through the tunnel into New Jersey.

Here's more conventional Cage music I happen to like:

links for 2008-05-03

• Singer Saints:

  Paul Jacobs Plays Blues, Ballads & Rags
  "Aaron Copland always wrote elegant, concise and substantial music no matter how elemental his themes and FOUR PIANO BLUES is no exception. "
• Out West Arts: I read the news today, oh boy
  "But I can think of no composer of art music today whose work would be so immediately recognizable to a lay ear without foreknowledge of the particular piece in question...Like his work or not – I wager it’s going to be remembered."
• YouTube - Synchronization
  Everything you ever need to know about how to synch five metronomes.
• YouTube - György Ligeti - Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes
  And for an opposing viewpoint...
• YouTube - Visualizing Beethoven's Opus 111 - First Attempt
  By classicalconvert.

El Salón México (1932-36). Aaron Copland

Ever since we realized my iPod was in the middle of the wash machine cycle earlier this week, I've returned to listening to my legacy CDs. I continue to be impressed by how good the music of Aaron Copland sounds when transcribed for piano. Maybe it's the mixture of astringency and warmth.

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out of stock eugenie russo cd at amazon. el salón méxico on wikipedia.