aworks :: "new" american classical music

links for 2008-04-30

• Theater of Found Sounds: Henry Brant (1913-2008)
  "Today everyone should go listen to Brant's transcription of Ives' Concord Sonata....a translation such as Brant's exists not as a mere copy, but a musical truth independent of Ives' original."
• Wrath of the Grapevine: The Roots of John Fahey
  "this way I could highlight certain connections, such as beautiful modal dissonances found in the music of both Son House and Bartók, the shimmering just intonality of Southeast Asian gamelan ensembles and the homemade microtonal music of Harry Partch."

links for 2008-04-29

• Stanford Laptop Orchestra | Pacific Rim of Wire
  "musicians from...CCRMA...will connect with musicians...in Beijing to perform - in real time via a webcast ...and marks the premiere of the all-new Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk)"
• Kokomo Tribune; Kokomo, Indiana - Obama addresses economic woes
  First presidential candidate to visit since Reagan in 1980.
  (tags: indiana politics)
• Kokomo Tribune; Kokomo, Indiana - IUK student shoots hoops with Obama
  '“He’s got good moves for a politician,” McKay said. '
• Kokomo Tribune; Kokomo, Indiana - Hillary at Memorial Gym Wednesday
  'Sen. Hillary Clinton will attend a "Standing up for Jobs" rally at Memorial Gym' No word yet on if she plans any bowling or basketball...
• YouTube - PRINCE - CREEP (Radiohead) - LIVE @ COACHELLA 08
  Ok, I wasn't expecting this...

links for 2008-04-28

• Letter V: Boulez the optimist
  'Pierre Boulez on the classical audience's receptivity to modern and contemporary music: "20% are very interested in new things, 50% can be persuaded and 30% are in their coffins before their time."'
• Del Sol String Quartet • Ring of Fire
  "Home to earthquake swarms and volcanic eruptions, the countries of the Pacific Rim also produce some of the world's most groundbreaking composers." New CD from Other Minds.

links for 2008-04-27

• Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody
  "If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. " Our cognitive surplus going towards Wikipedia instead of tv...
• Humanoid robot to conduct Detroit Symphony Orchestra
  As opposed to a robotic human, I suppose.

aworks ordered list :: amazon kindle wishlist

I splurged and bought the Amazon Kindle for electronic reading. After several days of use, I feel like I did when I first bought a CD player in the Eighties -- this is a new world.

The Kindle is a first generation product and has some interface glitches (the annotation facility is not as usable as I hoped, battery ran out unexpectedly on my commute etc.). Also, it is based on a proprietary format. But overall the device is easy to hold and read. And the wireless connection works surprisingly well. So well in fact that if the supplied experimental web browser becomes more reliable, I'd use this much more than my web-enabled phone with a much tinier screen.

In the aworks household, opinion is mixed. The local 7-year-old likes it and is in the middle of reading Nim's Island. The local spouse (and former Stanford English major) prefers legacy technology.

I'm also sorting through what books are available in Kindle format and at what cost. Five minutes of browsing turns up lots of interesting music titles, many at $10.00 or less although the academic titles appear to be more. Here's my new wish list:

1. Keyboard Music Before 1700. A. Silbiger
2. Monk's Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making. Gabriel Solis
3. Hitchcock's Music. Jack Sullivan
4. Classical Music, Why Bother?: Hearing the World of Contemporary Culture Through a Composer's Ears. Joshua Fineberg
5. From Paris to Peoria: How European Piano Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the American Heartland. R. Allen Lott
6. Musicophilia. Oliver Sacks
7. Songs in Their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives. Patricia Shehan Campbell
8. 20th Century Chamber Music. James McCalla
9. Louis Moreau Gottschalk and the Rise of Cuban Music. George L. Moneo
10. Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945. William Howland Kenney
11. Who Needs Classical Music?: Cultural Choice and Musical Value. Julian Johnson
12. For the Love of Music: Invitations to Listening. Michael Steinberg
13. The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany. Martin Goldsmith

I'd add The Rest Is Noise to this list but will hold off since I already own paper and audio versions. Now if I could just get Fanfare and Wire magazines on the device...

links for 2008-04-26

• Fun Forever - Luxury fun is affordable for everyone! » Giant Pianos
  Via blogbytes, photos of giant pianos.
• The Internet Pinball Machine Database: Juke Box / IPD No. 1324 / September, 1976 / 4 Players
  The Standing Room's link re: pinball prompted me to search ipdb for my favorite game growing up.

links for 2008-04-25

• Nico Muhly » When I am Old White People
  "When I am Old White People, I seriously hope I never have insane and loud coughing fits during Satyagraha. That is all." Which reminds me of when I had my coughing fit in the middle of Kronos Quartet at the Ojai Music Festival. And I was still young...

links for 2008-04-24

• Inside the Classics: Cutting Room Floor: Validation & Legacy
  "in 1970, the committee...gave the award to Charles Wuorinen, for his synthesizer symphony, Time's Encomium. ... this was the moment when concert music in America truly went off the rails and lost popular audiences forever."

links for 2008-04-23

• Dial "M" for Musicology: A Style Out of Time
  "Myself, I can’t get through the wall to the Mystery—why music from its time can sound timeless, but music out of its time is somehow culturally less connected, less vivid and immediate."
• Behind The Approval Matrix: Puppetry in "Satyagraha"
  "2nd\NE Quadrant The Approval Matrix"
• Poor Richard's Anorak: Dennis Irwin Tribute Concert at JALC
  "The Jazz at Lincoln Center tribute is here beautifully described by Simon Rentner on the WBGO Blog, with lovely photos."

links for 2008-04-22

• because they are dead: 222
  "music and text based on a harmonic deconstruction of Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary. What better than “borrowing” music from one of the most famous funerals of a British Monarch...to honor those whose brutal deaths wh ...go unnoticed
• Rolling Stone : Metallica Talk New LP, U.S. Tour at Frenzied Record Store Day
  “I couldn’t even speak,” said twenty-year-old San Jose, CA resident Ken Sapp. “It was the best experience of my life.” Me too if they would have had Aaron Jay Kernis CDs in stock...
• Clara Peller Dept.: 50 Cent Befuddled By Alicia Keys' 'Classical Music S---'
  "If she don't like that, (then) I don't like that classical music s—- she be doing. At some point she's playing some s—- that don't relate to me." I feel that way about lots of classical music as well
• Idolator's American Idolatry: "American Idol" Is Getting Voted Off By Demographically Desirable Viewers
  "they've plummeted...among two key demographic groups—women ages 18-34 and kids ages 2-11"
• Leonard Link: Musical Americana: Snatches of the New
  "a new release of new-old music, Henry Brant's "A Concord Symphony" (1995), an orchestral concoction constructed on the framework of Charles Ives' Piano Sonata No. 2 ("Concord, Mass., 1840-60")...Is it Ives or is it Brant?"
• Night After Night: Art of Glass.
  "...a review of Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. This enlightening new documentary...just opened last Friday at the IFC Center here in New York...Bookings in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. are pending."
• john-adams nixon in china torrent libretto - Google Search
  Am I the only one who didn't realize contemporary opera librettos can be found via bit torrents?