aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks five-star links and tracks :: november 14th, 2009 /jazz and not jazz/

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100 best jazz albums of all time, including three from this century. (Martin Gayford/Telegraph)

#100 from that list, a 2009 recording. Yawn. (lala)

Chamber Music American to honor Chick Corea (NewMusicBox)

Chick Corea's entry on the top 100 jazz list. (lala)

Alvin Lucier says he wasn't good enough to play jazz so he studied classical instead. It occurs to me his music may be as far away as you can get from frenetic jazz improvisation. (Weslyan Argus via Avant Music News)

Henry Cowell/Open Minds coverage in the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend either concert this week. (Brett Campbell/WSJ).

"Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman is, we hear, a sumptuous documentary about the accomplished Californian architectural photographer who captured the work of nearly every modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Frank Gehry." (BerkeleySide)

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aworks five-star links and tracks :: october 27th, 2009 /bridging differences/

Image by trainman74 via Flickr

The Transcontinental vows to be the blogosphere's Adorno defender.

Hmm, the Bay Bridge is closed again after the Labor Day repair has apparently failed. I start regularly commuting over a bridge for the first time starting Tuesday but I think/hope my bridge is more reliable. At least I don't live or work on Treasure Island. And McSweeney's is co-sponsoring an effort to investigate the new Bay Bridge.

Summer Is Coming In has discovered Operabase, a database of opera performances.

The Respect Sextet has that double bill album with the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Sun Ra. So far, I greatly prefer the Sun Ra e.g. Angels and Demons at Play.

I can't get enough of Ty Forquer playing David Lang's Anvil Chorus. Vivid, insistent percussion.

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aworks five-star links and tracks :: july 23, 2009

National Symphony to twitter music notes in real-time. Let's not pre-judge. (Baltimore Sun).

"Help me understand atonal music." No great answers yet although one responder claims to be the parent of a contributor to NewMusicBox. (AskMetaFilter)

DJ Spooky remixes the Grand Valley State version of Terry Riley's In C. Odd yet familiar. (djspooky.com)

The Azica Records page. I'm listening to Ives' Prelude for Organ on "Adeste fidelis." Also, Knee 4 from Einstein on the Beach on guitar. (InstantEncore)

Photos from the pre-concert preparations for tonight's Koyaanisqatsi at the Hollywood Bowl. (Glass Notes)

aworks five-star links and tracks :: june 13, 2009 /notes from my summer vacation away from "real" classical music/

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"Later, the Malian band Amadou et Mariam tore into a modal African rocker that would have been equally at home as a Celtic Appalachian fiddle tune." (Jon Pareles New York Times)

Elvis Costello to play at LA and SF Amoebas. (Chal Pivik la.metblogs)

Summer Breeze by Seals & Crofts includes a toy piano part. Just noticed this. (Wikipedia lala)

Some guy asks why he hates jazz after 1940. Yikes. I happen to love modal playing as well as "melodic lines that are sporadic and broken by abnormally large tonal gaps, which I think some people really struggle to find any sort of beauty in." Answer turned out to be chordal extensions and parallel movement. (AskMetaFilter) 

Tone Dialing by Ornette Coleman. Not recommended for certain AskMetaFilter people. (no lala track available, unfortunately ,but found it on GrooveShark)

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aworks five-star links and tracks :: june 6, 2009 /past and future greatness/

Aaron Copland via last.fm

if you don't own the live recording of Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto that Drucker made with Leonard Bernstein and the Philharmonic in 1989, you're missing one of the all-time great musical experiences. (Terry Teachout)

Obama Hieroglyphic: Your president's End The Hate 2009 Tour included a visit to an Ancient Egyptian tomb, where he spotted this 4600-year-old little guy. (Buzzfeed)

Polka gets booted from the Grammys. (New York Times).

Well You Needn't. Thelonious Monk. (lala). Includes the part two minutes into it where Monk calls out "Coltrane! Coltrane".

This doesn't necessarily imply that the parents have to play an instrument. Just having an environment in the home where lots of music is heard helps, and the more diverse the music, the better.  (Byzantium Shores). The aworks parenting team has this well covered, between the drummer-spouse and the guy with rather eclectic listening tastes.

Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you, because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place where people will stop waging war. (ABC News)

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aworks five-star links & tracks :: may 11, 2009

Image via CrunchBase

I find the story a bit too melodramatic, with its misunderstood artist on his deathbed surrounded by bourgeois blockheads.  (The Fredösphere) Regarding Menotti's The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore.

So to write the Oxford History of Western Music on Twitter would require 579,360 Tweets (4,080 X 142). (Deceptively Simple)

Whoa, 99 "essential" classical music songs on mp3 for only $7.99 at Amazon. (kottke.org)  Barber's Adagio at #43. I don't see any equivalent CD.

aworks five-star links & tracks :: may 5, 2009 /schizopolis edition/

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As such, it is a chart dominated by unsigned regional artists, who favor a sweat-and-shoe-leather predigital model of promotion, marketing their records to club DJs. (Jody Rosen/Slate)

How did this genius composer come to be synonymous with the worst aspects of 19th-century music - its conservatism, nostalgia, sentimentality and superficiality? (Tom Service/Guardian)

Millennials would do well to ignore the hypocrisy—and heed the lessons. The sooner today’s children succeed in displaying these virtues, the more likely older people will be to treat them generously (The Gen X Files). Older people == boomers, in this case. And based on the local 87-year-old and the local 8-year-old, I'm confident virtue will win out e.g. both extremes have a strong aversion to swear words, even if those of us in between don't.

Pieces from "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" are used in Stanley Kubrick's film, The Shining, and in the 2006 dystopian film Children of Men. (Wikipedia)

Spock is half-human, after all. Giving voice to his emotional side through song, and his logical side through spoken word makes complete sense. Plus, the lyrical connection is actually spot-on. (ANAblog)   

Three day rental of of the not-yet-generally available The Girlfriend Experience by Stephen Soderbergh is $3.99. (Amazon). Me, I'd pay to see his Schizopolis again. (Wikipedia)

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aworks five-star links & tracks :: may 4, 2009

You are at 1:03:42 of the Wizard of Oz. The movie's full running time is 1:41:42. You'll advance to the next second in about 1.3 days. (amberdigital). Uh oh, my life is now at the Emerald City. Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road.

New Weird America describes a subgenre of psychedelic folk music of the mid/late 2000s...It also finds inspiration in such disparate sources as heavy metal, free jazz, electronic music, noise music, various ethnic musics, musique concrete, tropicália, and early- and mid-20th century American folk music. (Wikipedia)

If you type "Philip Glass" into ArtistCloud, you get at least five composers I've never heard of before. Yet if you type "John Adams," I know all of them. Warning: the page immediately starts playing a YouTube video.

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aworks five-star links and tracks :: april 18, 2009 /umlaut edition/

Scary Image by Getty Images via Daylife

wounded inner child finds redemption through show biz (Fredösphere). Although I hate musical theatre, never watch reality TV, seldom know what to think about Brit culture, don't spend much time watching  YouTube, feel annoyed that Simon Cowell has polluted the Henry Cowell google search space, and find myself only mildly interested in the strong reaction by the global village,  I have nonetheless watched that video five times so far.

StumbleAudio is interesting. The classical selection seemed to be third-tier Vivaldi performances and the jazz struck me as tepid, but the avant garde channel turned up some promising music e.g. Käärmeenkääntopiiri by Uton & Valerio Cosi. (Via Cahl's Juke Joint).

Spirals: American Music in Moscow by Moscow Studio for New Music (emusic). I don't know what the story is on this one but it was worth a download.

Collecting is now subjective; there is no longer a standard, such as a record or CD collection.  It spans various mediums, where the individual collects songs, but does not necessarily own all of them. (Hypebot). This is precisely what I am learning how to do.

Come Together. Count Basie (lala). A conventional jazz arrangement of a Beatles song except Basie's sparse piano, although hard to hear, adds to the tune.

I believe that the opera-going demographic wishes to signal "magnanimity."  (Marginal Revolution). An economist on why we don't boo.

David Robertson can sing as well as conduct. (kottke.org) 

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aworks five-star links and tracks :: april 15, 2009 /rock edition/

Bono image via Wikipedia

Joey (Ramone), Bono & Me. (Flaming Pablum).

Ultra Vomit Craze. Black Dice (lala). I just report to the statusphere what I like to listen to; it doesn't mean I endorse all aspects of said creation e.g. title.

Via Peacerocker, it turns out ? & the Mysterians recorded something beyond 96 Tears. And as I just explained to the gen-x-spouse, every baby boomer likes 96 Tears. (lala)

The reggae version of the Beatles' A Day in the Life is not that bad. "Woke up / Fell out of bed / Dragged my fingers through my dreads" (lala) And arguably, their cover of Radiohead's Fitter Happier is better than the original (lala).

Finally, as a bridge to the GI generation (hi local-eighty-seven-year-old!), Buddy Rich informs the audience they are recording and then leads his band on Norwegian Wood. (lala). The local-eight-year-old asks: is this the 2000 Year Old Man? No, although big band Beatles arrangements probably sound that old...

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