aworks :: "new" american classical music

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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aworks five-star links and tracks :: april 10, 2009 /i-5 recap/

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Recapping the whereabouts of myself and the local eight-year-old for each of the last four days:

Day 1: Menlo Park, I-5*, Downtown Disney, hotel
Day 2: Disneyland, Downtown Disney, hotel pool, Downtown Disney, hotel pool, hotel
Day 3: Disneyland, Downtown Disney, hotel pool, Disneyland, hotel
Day 4: Amoeba/Hollywood, I-5, Menlo Park

Moby is an idiot. This album proves it. (lala - mini-review and clips only). And yet, when inside the LA city limits and stuck in traffic on I-5, Iss at least sounded cool and refreshing.

Auld Lang Syne and Death's Not Your Friend. Wooden Shjips. In between 2000 Year Old Man CDs of Mel Brooks and Rob Reiner on the trip (we listened to all four! Twice! Plus Amoeba had the CD of 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000!), I think I also listened to the dirty guitar of Wooden Shjips.

Which Pianist Doesn't Like Daniel Albright? (AskMetaFilter). No real answer yet.

Hmm, Brahms, Mozart, Haydn and A Flowering Tree -- not exactly edgy or even all that interesting. (Iron Tongue of Midnight)

Never Can Say Goodbye (OutWestArts). And in other LA news...

---

*Ok, technically, I-5 doesn't go all the way to Menlo Park. But in my mind anyway, Highway 152/Pacheco Pass officially demarcates the greater Menlo Park metropolitan area (unless you are that mad engineer on our team who commutes from south of Hollister).

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aworks five-star links and tracks :: april 7, 2009 /serious, weird, outrageous.../

Für Lennart In Memoriam. Arvo Pärt. (lala). Now what's what I call (serious) music. Update: I happened to be listening to this again when I saw this somber military casket photo.

Digits. Neil Rolnick. (lala). And his A Robert Johnson Sampler is weird.

Bob Dylan on reading Obama: His writing style hits you on more than one level. It makes you feel and think at the same time and that is hard to do. He says profoundly outrageous things. He’s looking at a shrunken head inside of a glass case in some museum with a bunch of other people and he’s wondering if any of these people realize that they could be looking at one of their ancestors. (Andrew Sullivan)

TIME Magazine Cover: Hipper Than Thou - Aug. 8, 1994 - Popular Culture - Society (DTYBYWL). Hard to believe it's been fifteen years since the heydey of alternative rock.

I would require our young critics to write down their first responses to a given work of art, as well as the opinions they arrived at after some contemplation and reading. Enthusiasm is not a sin; neither is contemplation. (Dragoncave)

yet another post mortem: I've had a chance to listen to Wednesday's concert a couple of times now... (Steven Rubio). If only classical concerts had (legal or not) MP3s available shortly after a concert, like the recent Springsteen concert in San Jose or Radiohead in SF and Berkeley. Was John Adams' String Quartet as good as I heard yesterday?

aworks five-star links and tracks :: april 2, 2009 /future and past/

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

My favorite search referrer of the day "walmart has machine that plays samples from ballad cds". I'm a software guy but I suppose there is nothing preventing WalMart from building a ballad-specific hardware sampler machine.

Hence the birth of the music collection, which in a sense just consisted of the music that’s now collecting dust. Having bought the music, you keep it in your collection even though you know you’re never going to listen to it again. (Hypebot)

I believe these experiments point to the future of online music which will be a paradigm shift in why music is distributed (and how it is licensed) and how we consume music, in which a lot of music will be free and will be experienced interactively! (Continuations)    

The End of the Music Album as The Organizing Principle. aworks was organized in an attempt to overcome the hegemony of the album but even for me, streamed tracks in the cloud may win out.

An Bad Dubh.  Clann Zu. The forming members drew inspiration from an eclectic mix of musical styles, such as punk, rock, folk, electronic, and classical. A guilty diversion from all the Music in Twelve Parts and Earle Brown works I continue to listen to. (lala)

Via Steven Rubio, it's Brucebase. And yes, they have the concert set listing and ticket stub for the one and only Bruce Springsteen concert I attended. I still don't know why I quickly lost my 8 or so years of Bruce enthusiasm after seeing such a great concert in Indianapolis. I was young and stupid, I guess. I do enjoy his recent Pete Seeger tribute album, though. By the way, I heard "Sandy" playing at Walgreen's the other day. I still don't know what the end of this line from the song means: The kids say last night she was dressed like a star in one of them cheap little seaside bars, and I saw her parked with Loverboy out on the Kokomo (lala)

Speaking of young and stupid: Palin’s spokeswoman, Meg Stapleton, said Palin will be taking a “36-hour vacation” to attend the events in Indiana. (Think Progress).

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aworks five-star links and tracks :: march 30, 2009 /bad and good day/

Steve Reich (via last.fm)

• Someone was searching today for "robert gable nudes." This in turn alerted me that someone had defaced my quite serious Memorial Day 2006 post with a comment about various undressed celebrities. I'm normally good-natured about spam but this was annoying.
• I thought I heard Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians (lala) playing in Starbucks today although the place was quite loud and I wasn't sure. Also, the balance on my Starbucks gift card was 20 cents less than I needed.
• I'm disappointed I didn't notice today's earthquake (sfist).
• For better or worse, Green Day will do a musical at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. (SF Chronicle via artsJournal)
• TechCrunch has a video of lala's future iPhone client.
• Favorite recent NetFlix instant play: Kinamand -- a Danish/Chinese film.
• Favorite track from Phil Kline's John the Revelator: lala.
• Favorite track from the Marin Alsop recording of Mark O'Connor's Americana Symphony: lala

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

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The Magic of Ju-Ju. Archie Shepp. I've always been lukewarm about the sixties-ish jazz of Archie Shepp but this title track caught my attention -- both for the skull on the album cover as well as Shepp's tenor over a more tribal rhythm section (lala).

March. Joshua Redman. I seem to like martial jazz (lala). See also Jimmy Smith (lala).

String Quartet. Earle Brown. This is inexplicably appealing. (lala)

However, it is clear that this horrific production is as worn and thread bare as carpet in a filthy nursing home. (Out West Arts)

aworks five-star links and tracks :: march 21, 2009 /march madness/

Earle Brown (via last.fm)

Between B & C. Keiran Hebden and Steve Reid. This is the first year that I'm watching the NCAA basketball tournament via Web streaming. The quality is surprisingly good even if the games have been surprisingly boring. To compensate, I've started playing tracks at the same time and this one is powerful enough to cut through the sportscasters if not the television ads. I listen on headphones so the Cage-ian effect isn't inflicted on family. (lala)

Henry Kaiser recommends books that have influenced him, musically and beyond. (ANAblog)

Graph of rock music quality vs. US oil production, for "peak rock" and "peak oil" theorists. (Overthinking It)

Music for Violin, Cello & Piano. Earle Brown. Not as austere as it could be, I suppose. The composer says some of the composition is created "subjectively and spontaneously." (lala earle-brown.org)