aworks :: "new" american classical music

links for 2007-08-31

• SFGate Community: Haggis, Hats and Hurrahs
  SFS plays Strauss' Short Ride in a Fast Machine. I'd pay to hear that.
• INDIEBLOGHEAVEN: New Video: Feist: "1234" with New Pornographers, Grizzly Bear, the National, and Mates of State (Live on "Late Show With David Letterman")
  "It's like the "We Are The World" of indie rock." And those colored arm covers are weird.

links for 2007-08-30

• Amazon.com: Inside Classic Rock Tracks: Songwriting And Recording Secrets Of 100 Great Songs, From 1960 To The Present Day: Books: Rikky Rooksby
  "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): forbidden colours, tremolo guitar, main riff, altered tuning, physical graffiti, backing vocals, guitar figure, chart music, key chord, guitar break, album version, chord sequence, drum loop"
• Amazon.com: Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice: Books: Robert Fink
  "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): minimalist process music, higher disco, pitch plateaus, repetitive listening, minimal music, musical minimalism, repetitive music, minimalist repetition, hermeneutic window, repetitive society..."
• Amazon.com: The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger (Music in the Twentieth Century): Books: Joseph N. Straus
  "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): segmental subsets, chromatic zone, serial melodies, serial melody, intervallic concerns, registral lines, chromatic completion, retrograde symmetry, thirteen semitones, dynamic high points..."
• Amazon.com: The Jazz Cadence of American Culture: Books: Robert O'Meally
  "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): ben riles, quinsy troupe, jim merod, intrinsic perceptual interest, elusive swing, racial syncretism, rhythm tappers, benny golson, muni bird, one hour mama, jazz historiography, fugitive spirit"
• Amazon.com: Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons: Books: Jonathan Rosenbaum
  "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): narrative correctness, asthenic syndrome, film canons, camera style"
• Amazon.com: Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (History of Jazz): Books: Gunther Schuller
  "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): rhythmic substructure, blues craze, rhythmic conception, piano tradition, acoustical recordings, ragtime pieces, collective ensemble, clarinet trio, final choruses, ensemble style, plunger mute..."
• Amazon.com: Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos (Music in American Life): Books: Harry Partch
  "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): chromatic organ, transcontinental hobo trip, crowding woods, goat woman, courthouse park, lost musicians...mobile instruments, woo woo woo woo, ...male womb, spot picks, soul tormented"
• Too Many Tristans: Greatest Classical CD Covers EVER?
  via fredosphere

links for 2007-08-29

• PostClassic:
  "what convinces me that a piece is minimalist is its low information content, the fact that what's first noticeable about it is that less is going on than in conventional classical (or pop) music." - is this why I feel less enthusiastic about newer Adams?

links for 2007-08-28

• peermusic classical : Publisher of Contemporary Classical Music Since 1948 - Charles E. Ives - Symphony No. 2, Critical Edition - Order Here
  Via a gmail sponsored link.
• Renewable Music: Make it new
  "The choice is between saying something which simply has not been said and heard before and saying something which was heretofore impossible to say or hear."

links for 2007-08-27

• Classical Music - News - Times Topics - The New York Times :: Classical Music
  The Times topic page for classical music. I was hoping it would then be arranged by sub-topic but it's just chronological.
• YouTube - Appalachian Spring conducted by Peter Wilson
• YouTube - Charles E. Ives - Two Little Flowers
  Charles Van Tassel and Marien Van Nieukerken. Short and sweet.
• Letters and Surveys: A Convergence of Politics and Opera
  A letter to the late Richard Nixon, suggesting the Adams opera is a good way to be immortalized.

links for 2007-08-26

• Classically Influenced Metal Song? | Ask MetaFilter
  "At the risk of starting a Metal Fight, I would strongly reccomend not following The Carolingian's suggestion of S&M by Metallica. This recording is the perfect example of how not to mesh classical and rock music."
• Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Rise of the wikicrats
  I may be an inclusionist rather than a deletionist since the latter is why I stopped trying to write new musical work articles in Wikipedia.
• Ateriavia - We're Not Dutch, But We Wear These Wooden Shoes Like We're From Montana. – Music at Last.fm
  Track title of the day.
• Iron Tongue of Midnight: This Week's Quiz
  "My least favorite [spouse] is Charles Seeger, because Ruth Crawford was destined for greater things than she accomplished as a composer." For the record, I've read the biography of Charles. Hmm, I need to see if there is a Ruth biography.
• Amazon.com: ruth crawford - Amazon.com: Books
  Hmm, several interesting titles.
• Leonard Link: J&R Steps Up and Fills the Gap
  "Those bereft by the demise of Tower as a classical source should rush on down to J&R and support this expansion... There are not that many other places in NYC now to buy classical releases - Academy...Barnes & Noble...Juilliard Bookstore..."

links for 2007-08-24

• Life With Alacrity: Using 5-Star Rating Systems
  "we need to provide raters with incentives, so that they provide meaningful ratings...when a person takes the time to write text, and knows that his name will be attached to it, he generally does a better job in his rating." via donnunn.com
• Doctor Atomic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Interestingly, Kitty Oppenheimer doesn't have a Wikipedia article. Will that change or is she "non-notable."
• Category:Minimalist operas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Nyman, Glass, Adams.
• PlaybillArts: News: Boosey & Hawkes Announces Upcoming World Premieres: Adams, Adès, Carter, Chin, Kernis, Reich, Etc.
  Adams' Son of Chamber Symphony, Argento's Evensong: of Love and Angels, Carter's Horn Concerto, Daugherty's TroyJam, Reich's Double Sextet et al.

Violin Concerto (1993). John Adams /all our mileages may vary/

I'm not surprised about any lukewarm response to John Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony since I share that impression. But I am surprised at widely divergent reactions to other music of the composer.

First, David Toub, who appears to generally like the music of Adams, can't stand to listen to Violin Concerto. Then, Steve Hicken, who lists Violin Concerto as the one Adams piece in his 101 essential pieces of the 20th century, admits he doesn't "get" the music of Adams.

Since the instant I heard Shaker Loops on the radio twenty years ago, I've always felt I "got" this music although it's possible that as Adams' techniques have grown in sophistication, that feeling may be diminishing. And the idea that he might ultimately be remembered as an opera composer boggles my mind, Nixon in China's I'm the Wife of Mao Zedong not withstanding:

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aworks: violin concerto. doctor atomic. nixon in china. youtube: i'm the wife of mao zedong from nixon in china

links for 2007-08-23

• Steven Rubio's Online Life: 45
  Description of a guy on YouTube who posts videos of songs playing on a turntable. The iTunes equivalent of watching the timing bar move just isn't as satisfying.
• Out West Arts: Two Tickets to Paradise
  Brian sees that new musical theatre piece by Eric Whitacre :: "Despite the wonderful music and excellent performance from Plitmann, Shadows is burdened with a wince-inducing scenario and book that obliterate everything in their paths"
• Notes from a Defeatist: Prom 50: Copland/Adams
  "John Adams, with his white jacket, bow tie and white beard, looks like an old Southern gentleman, ... This is what I keep telling myself in an attempt to drown out the other thought: that he looks a bit like Colonel Sanders"
• Sequenza21/ » John Adams at the Proms
  "Adams the opera composer has a pretty near perfect sense of how long things should go on and when something different should happen. Century Rolls, a big piano concerto, suggests that Adams the instrumental composer doesn’t."

Ko Ko (1946). Charlie Parker /max and dizzy and and bud and charles and charlie/

MIchael J. West reflects on the late Max Roach and recognizes this jazz classic:

Is it any wonder that Charlie Parker, a great talent scout, hired Roach for his own band? On “Ko Ko,” the record that broke Parker to the jazz public, the only full-length solo besides Bird’s is Roach’s. That solo is almost as eye-opening as the sax one—the whirl of frenetic cacophony is actually a musical variation on the riffy head Parker had written in place of “Cherokee,” played at blinding speed and utilizing seemingly every sound a trap set can make. Once you really hear it, you’ll never listen to “Ko Ko” in the same way again. It becomes a double revolution, a new way of conceiving percussion just as it’s a new way of phrasing melodies.

I wonder if Roach's death marks the end of the bop area? Although, Michael makes the point that as a musician and artist, the drummer accomplished so much more over a long period of time. Still, it's hard to believe Max was the last living musician from that renowned Massey Hall concert. This reminds me I read Geoffrey Haydon's Quintet of the Year: Massey Hall 1953; The Greatest Jazz Concert of All Time last year.  The author manages to successfully weave a book around the careers of the musicians and yet center it on one seminal performance.