aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks list :: 10 from the amazon classical blowout store

amazon classical blowout

aworks list :: charles ives according to google

1. Symphony No. 2. Redlands Symphony performance. web:63,700 blog:21 news:2
2. Symphony No. 4. Those who insist that all classical music is dull and lifeless will find a challenge in this work. web:36,300 blog:17 news:0
3. Symphony No. 3. web:33,400 blog:19 news:0
4. Symphony No. 1. Maazel delved into the iconoclastic Charles Ives. web:29,700 blog:18 news:2
5. Sonata No. 2. 20,700:web  blog:12 news:0.
6. Central Park in the Dark. Tim Pfaff reviews a Dallas Symphony CD on Hyperion. web:17,900  blog:18 news:2
7. Ann Street. It might interest you to know that there is a famous song about an Ann Street by the composer Charles Ives. You should look it up. web:3,460 blog:6 news 0
8. Like a Sick Eagle. Last night I was in rapture listening to baritone Gerald Finley and pianist Julius Drake on a recent Hyperion recording with an impressively chosen group of 31 (of the 114 that exist), including outstanding versions of Memories (1897), Ich Grolle Nicht (1898), Like a Sick Eagle (1920) and the rarely done Slugging a Vampire (1902). web:2,720 blog:4 news 0
8. The Children's Hour. web:2,720 blog:1 news 0.
10. Gyp the Blood’ or Hearst - Which is Worst?. Sigh, aworks is the top web link on a favorite Ives work. Worse, my trivial last.fm tag is the twenty-ninth result. web 438 blog:1 news 0:
    

aworks list :: musicovery graded

It's another web music discovery gadget -- musicovery.com. You pick the intersection of dark/positive mood and energetic/calm and then it plays tracks that match that combination (in low-fidelity for the free version). I chose 100% dark and 50% energetic/calm:

• Baby Please Don't Go. Al Kooper. Worst song I've heard in awhile. d
• Missing. Everybody but the Girl. Worst song I've heard since the previous one. d
• Let's Go to Bed. The Cure. Ok, a little bit catchy even though Robert Smith's voice and hair aren't. c
• All Along the Watchtower. Bob Dylan. Prefer the Hendrix version. I hate to say it but I can see a path from Dylan to Smith in these back-to-back songs anyway, beyond the hair and voice that is. a
• Heart Full of Soul. Chris Isaak. Rockers don't sound so good in lo-fi but still. b
• Four Days. Counting Crows. Is this the UC Berkeley guy? How come I can never remember my Bay Area rock stars? Is that Third Eye Blind guy still around? How is Carlos doing these days? d
• Mrs. Potter's Lullaby. Counting Crows. A bit of country guitar helps. b
• Tainted Love. Soft Cell. Beep beep. a
• Johnny & Mary. Robert Palmer. Low-key for Robert Palmer; very much meets the criteria. b.
• Etudes tableaux op. 39 no. 1. Rachmaninoff. Classical music included and not ghettoized. Wow. Don't like this one so much, although maybe that's because of the mundane piano timbre compared to what proceeded it. c

Oh, I see, you can filter by genre. Classical and jazz mode follows:

• Passion St Matthieu. Bach. It feels odd to give the music of Bach a grade but anyway. a
• Passion St Jean - Introduction. Bach. a
• Delta Mood. Duke Ellington. Never heard this before but it has an edge to it. b
• Messe in ut : Kyrie. Mozart. En francais. Got it. Oh no, I just clicked on le diagram and scrambled the path and Mozart has disappeared.
• Symphony No. 4 - 3rd movement. Schumann. I prefer the Schuman with one "n" I suppose. c
• Unrequired. Brad Mehldau. b.
• Moments musicaux D780 No. 4. Schubert. How I lost my love for Schubert, I'll never know. c
• Winterreise - gute nacht. Schubert. Ok, not completely. a
• Desert Winds. Kenny Burrel [sic] and Illinois Jacquet. More tasteful than I was expecting. c.
• Lonely Woman. Ornette Coleman. Ok, I skipped around to find this track. It was between Liszt and Chopin of all people. a

aworks list :: web 2.0 - genius or inane?

After reviewing some old aworks posts on this stuff (here and here), an update:

• lala - Here's my CD collection as seen by lala. I've logged 812 CDs that I admit I own, I covet 71, I've shipped 13 and I've received 10. Lala also logs what I play on my computer. The site has the obligatory web community features as well e.g. members with collections similar to mine don't seem to have collections all that similiar.
• last.fm - I seemed to have stopped using it to play music although it still logs what I play on my computer. The artists I have played the most, on my computer anyway, are Radiohead, Miles Davis, Boards of Canada, Leo Kottke, Alan Hovhaness, Four Tet, Philip Glass, Gordon Lightfoot, Alan Feinberg, and the Academy of Ancient Music. The site also has the obligatory web community features e.g. the people who play music most similar to me seem to be young, male Europeans.
• pandora - I seemed to have stopped using it to play music although here's what I bookmarked. If you use pandorafm, it logs what I play on Pandora but over on last.fm. Don't remember if it has web community features.
• mog - This reminds me of LiveJournal for music fans as the site has more obligatory community features than any other site. It doesn't log what I play on my computer because for some reason I uninstalled "mog-o-matic." I think I was uncomfortable uploading my 70 Mb iTunes music library file but I don't remember for sure. Here's my page although the "Mog Meter" characterizes me as "chilled." The site also now bills itself as a "musical nudity colony." No idea what that means or if that's why I am chilled.
• spotdj - This site is either genius or inane and here's my page to prove either case. You record short audio messages that get added to a community library. Then, you set up iTunes to automatically play from the library a short message (aka spot) that matches the artist or track just played. It's like a radio DJ except much, much stranger due to the lack of continuity since the spots can come from anyone. It also turns out talent is helpful; my William Grant Still spot has been played the most but deservedly has the lowest rating as I was basically reciting the Wikipedia entry. I thought my John Cage The Flowers spot clever, although my written responses to the "A Bit About Me" section of my page may be too clever.
• twitter - Also genius or inane, this is not a music site per se but I am experimenting by hijacking it for my own purposes. Twitter is a social community site that allows you to send 152 character (or less) messages via instant messenger, cell phone or browser for others to see. I'm using it to record my real-time thoughts as I listen to music. It's like blogging except all discretion and intelligence have been removed. Here's my page of posts so far.

aworks list :: he's back and he's listin'

Hey, is this thing still on? Smack, smack... Ok, we're back. Some pent-up random comments:

• I know next to nothing about Keith Fullerton Whitman but I am starting to think he is the long lost son of Terry Riley, in his pure keyboard pieces anyway, starting with Stereo Music for Farfisa Compact Duo Deluxe, Drum Kit. I think I discovered him at the Harvard radio orgy earlier this year.
• I found lots of interesting stuff at Tower Mountain View tonight including Jack DeJohnette's Music in the Key of Om. Not sure what it's about yet as I am still ripping (even if iTunes thinks the one, long track is Morton Feldman's String Quartet). And for all my analog legacy tendencies, I always rip before listening.
  
• Speaking of Tower, a big sign on the outside indicates Rasputin will open a branch in the soon-to-be-vacated store. For those who don't know Rasputin, it's like a scruffier, smaller version of Amoeba. The Berkeley Rasputin is reasonably good, I've found some good stuff at the San Francisco version even if the elevator requires an attendant, the one in San Jose is so-so, the one in Newark is not so good, and to be honest, I have no idea where in the Bay Area one might find Pleasant Hill. Still, for those of us who prefer to browse in analog, it's a nice surprise.
• I listen to music for the sound rather than the meaning as does Frank Oteri.
• I hadn't thought of Nancy van de Vate in awhile.
• My William Duckworth recommendation for modernclassical would be Imaginary Dances. This idea and the previous post ultimately via Kyle Gann.
• loreto martin points out Peter Greenaway's Four American Composers series is up on ubuweb.
• 1941 proto-minimalism via Howard Who?
• Radiohead's Everything in Its Right Place on that Rockabye Baby: Lullaby Renditions of Radiohead CD still sounds cool.
• Gable families mostly lived in Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1840, all hundred or so of us.

aworks list :: interesting, important, and maybe even fun

interesting

• Persian Surgery Dervishes. Terry Riley. Can't get enough of the keyboard Riley right now. This from Los Angeles 1971.
• Tinker Bell. Wayne Shorter. Is this a newly recorded album? I've heard this track but not sure the context.
• Entr'acte 1:Vergine Bella. Charles Wuorinen. From his Percussion Symphony.
• Secret Songs No.1. Tom Johnson. Another minimalism artifact I like from the seventies.
• Score reading or ...... post by Kenneth Woods.

important

• World's Wanderers. Charles Ives. Dora Ohrenstein. Ives' songs are important. And satisfying.
• If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? Julius Eastman. The only work of this late composer I've heard. I thought it trite band music starting out but by the end I was moved.

maybe even fun

• 2+2=5. Rockabye Baby!: Lullaby Renditions Of Radiohead. Michael Armstrong. Too scary for real babies? Fortunately, babies can't read the titles (Knives Out, Paranoid Android, Subterranean Homesick Alien etc.) and there are no frightening pictures of Thom Yorke so it's probably ok. Basically, it's a CD of Radiohead covers played on mallet instruments. I was afraid they would somehow make this music overly sweet (think Baby Mozart) but the glockenspiel and vibraphone give it almost a gamelan flavor.
  
• From the Ritz to the Rubble. Arctic Monkeys. I'm hooked, on this song anyway.
• 9. From, or more precisely, in the Buddha Machine. MP3s here.
• Untitled Demo. Setopianics. Random excellent track from a Wire Magazine CD.
• Traffic. Kate Conklin. Vocal attitude and a gendered perspective on conversation. From XX '99: CalArts Women's CD.
• Riding the Westerleys from The Harp of New Albion. Terry Riley. Joyous flight music. Played this numerous times last weekend and coincidentally, it was just on the NonPop podcast.

aworks list :: apply, rinse. repeat, skip to next track

Ok, if Nancy Pelosi has the skills and integrity to make it to Speaker of the House, the least I can do is be a little more rigorous as I pump iMusic through my brain. So, I've turned on the "repeat this track until I can't stand it" feature and will log the results. Because I value discretion, I'll omit unrepeated tracks. I also value my loyal feed readers so I apologize if you get bored as I update this post, until it falls off the feed.

Here we go...

• Double Portrait. David Borden. 14:41. I'm just learning Borden's music but this is vibrant, minimal acoustic piano with a surprisingly intense and long dynamic crescendo.
• Inertia Creeps [State Of Bengal Mix]. Massive Attack. 6:25. I never really thought of flute as Indian but it is. This track has a soft touch and yet the usual Massive Attack intensity.
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Benjamin Verdery. Some Towns and Cities. 2:20. Composed acoustic guitar music.
• Amidst Neptune. Caleb Burhans. Alarm Will Sound. 15:52. MP3 from the Reich Whitney concert here.
• Tears of Joy. Don Ellis. 2:58. Some kind of modulated jazz trumpet. This was also played on a Schickele mix program about odd meters.
• High Rise. Freddie King. I still enjoy listening to this late blues guitarist, if no longer his peers. His tone on guitar strikes me as particularly masculine.
• Variations on "America." Charles Ives. The Sax-Chamber Orchestra, Lawrence Gwozdz. All its use in jazz makes me think of the saxophone as being American and thus, particularly appropriate for an arrangement of this Ives piece. But of course, the sax was invented by a Belgian in Paris. I like this version anyway, even it if is occasionally too chirpy.
• Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box. Radiohead. Timbrally rich as usual.
• When The Lamp Is Shattered. George Antheil. Dissonant choral music is spooky.
• Robotica. Dub Narcotic Sound System. Uptempo, novelty dub meets Kraftwerk. napster.