aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks five-star links and tracks :: november 30, 2008 /sixties revisited online/

Bringing It All Back Home

• Crushed. The Brian Jonestown Massacre. This is the one band I like that I've only heard via streaming. Presumably, if I didn't already have a legacy collection of LPs, cassette tapes, CDs, and MP3 files, I would mostly collect on-line like this.

• It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding). A Bob Dylan cover by the crisp jazz group Jewels and Binoculars. Via HurdAudio (and the Amazon MP3 Store. And the fine original from Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home:

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

• LilyPond: In short, this model is obvious, simple and neat. It's the format used by a lot software. Unfortunately, it's also wrong. The hierarchical representation works for a lot of simpler music, but it falls apart for advanced use.

• Just outside: Listened to my two Pierre Droge LPs this morning. I think I came to him in the mid 80s hoping for something along the lines of Bengt Berger, that is, a Northern European making imaginative use of African melodies and structures. Dorge's approach, I think, is more aligning early jazz (20s Ellington, for example) with its African roots. Also, good photos and description of the train ride from NYC to Poughkeepsie.
  

String Quartet No. 8 (2002). Gloria Coates /current preoccupation/

Image by Tonyç via FlickrAlex V. Cook has a post about contemporary composers and his particular interest in string quartets. Related, I've been listening to the music of Gloria Coates for the last week and it's her string quartets that are the most provocative. This in turn led me to this Sequenza21 interview of the composer:

In 1962 in a graduate composition class I had written a string quartet entirely of glissandi. My professor became very upset and wrote on the piece, "A glissando is used once or twice in a piece for color, but the entire piece with glissandos is too...too...."

So far, her music sounds less like anything else I'm listening to but I don't know if this will be a lasting condition.

aworks five-star links and tracks :: november 29, 2008

Image via Wikipedia

• Interesting article in the LA Weekly about what happens to promo CDs: “Everybody sells them, let’s be realistic,” says one prominent L.A. music publicist. “I’m sure employees at Universal do it. And the impact on criticism: The authority of the music critic, in days gone by, was just that they had this access to the records, which allowed for the kind of judgment no normal human being could possess.
• Lots of listening today but nothing particularly stood out; the symphonies of Paul Creston may have been the highlight:
  

aworks five-star links and tracks :: november 28, 2008

Image via Wikipedia

• String Quartet 8 - Prayer. Gloria Coates. After yesterday's Duke Ellington -- the aural equivalent of turkey and dressing -- today it's time for the more tart cranberry salad of Gloria Coates. This is a simple track sans glissando. lala
• Varaha, Avatàra. Giacinto Scelsi. Werner Bärtschi. Dense piano music. Here's a lala stream of an alternate recording.
• When you are a child the last thing you want is for a parent (for instance) to enter the fort, bringing with them, inevitably, the stigma of the mundane. :: some childhood insight via Andrew Sullivan.

aworks five-star links and tracks :: november 26, 2008

146th St, Carmel, IN via Wikipedia

• Street Spirit (Funkagenda Remix). Radiohead. From Hype Machine, the driving beat doesn't sound as grafted on as one might imagine and there might be traces of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra.
• Backdrifts. Radiohead. This is a live MP3 via artdecade.us ('Specializing in music of the “long seventies”'). Although one of my favorite Radiohead tunes, this one is a puzzling and interesting version that sounds like it is about to come unwound. At one point, there's a false intro, Thom Yorke (I assume) suggests to change key, then he quietly test sings a phrase, says ok, and then things are back to normal. By the way, I do listen to music other than Radiohead but nothing notable this morning, from say, a sampling of music by David Diamond.
• I, Treebeard, apologize for goddamning 266th St. between Kokomo and Carmel, IN, as well as its inhabitants. My words were not only hasty, but harsh. I admit that I should be more accepting of different street-naming methods, and pledge to be more open-minded on future expeditions. :: And who knew there would be a 267th Street in NYC?
• Look! 70's Rock Musicians and Their Parent's Homes. Zappa's parents did have some decorating flair. Plus photos of Grace Slick in Palo Alto and David Crosby in Ojai.

Interventions (2008). Elliott Carter /scooped/

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeFor reasons unknown, I'm on the free distribution list for the quarterly WWD Scoop magazine. FYI, WWD stands for Women's Wear Daily, AFAIK. And on the cover of the newly arrived issue are these headlines, among others:

• Naked Truth: Marisa Tomei Tackles Her Riskiest Role Yet
• Party Loyalty: Socials Brace for a Chill
• Mistress of Cognac
• Composer Elliott Carter at 100

It appears Elliott Carter even gets coverage in the fashion press. Here are some quotes from Michelle Edgar's surprisingly good profile of the composer:

An old man has no memory whatsoever, so I don't have many pieces in my head," Carter says in his self-deprecating manner. "I get stuck with whatever piece it is I'm working on and I become a fanatic. I just want to get it down and finish it...

...I cannot help but feel that I'm getting a lot of performances because of my age." He smiles. "If I had these kind of performances at a time when I was not strikingly old--I would have felt I had made it.

Sorry, you will need to go elsewhere for Marisa Tomei quotes although I will point you to WGBH radio, broadcasting the premiere of Carter's Interventions on December 5th, prior to his 100th birthday on December 11th.

Grand Pianola Music (1982). John Adams /impressively bold and banal/

Samuel Vriezen on a John Adams work:

Grand Pianola Music does manage a level of banality that I find somehow impressive.

I obviously favor Adams' music more in general but I agree with that comment. And Wikipedia reports on its reception:

Grand Pianola Music was actually booed by a significant proportion of the audience at its premiere. According to the composer,"True, it was a very shaky performance, and the piece came at the end of a long series of concerts, many of which featured serialist works from the Columbia Princeton school....Grand Pianola Music must have seemed like a smirking truant with a dirty face, in need of a severe spanking". Despite the reaction, Adams maintains that the piece was not intended to 'thumb its nose' at the rest of the 'high art' pieces being performed at the event. The composer admits to be alarmed by the severity of its reception. Retrospectively, Adams finds that he is "impressed by its boldness".

lala:

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Modena (2002). Keith Fullerton Whitman /ring vs. ring-back/

Keith Fullerton Whitman via Wikipedia

Life's a Pitch proposes the music of Steve Reich as her personalized ring-back tone:

I would make my ringback "Clapping Music", should it become available. "Please enjoy the clapping while your party is reached."

She also points to the definition of a ring-back tone:

A Ring-back Tone (RBT) or Audible Ringing Tone is the audible ringing that is heard on the telephone line by the calling party after dialing and prior to the call being answered at the receiving end. This tone assures the calling party that a ringing signal is being sent on the called party's line, although the ring-back tone may be out of sync with the ringing signal.

I'm not sure how old I was when I first understood a ringback tone was not the actual ringtone of the phone you were calling.

My cell phone uses an odd slice of Keith Fullerton Whitman's Modena for its ringtone, often resulting in the general disorientation of those around me. It's probably not a wise choice for a ringback. Modena on lala:

aworks five-star links and tracks :: november 25, 2008

Image via Wikipedia

• There, There. Radiohead. As much as I say I prefer the electronic Radiohead, the guitar (and percussion) version is good as well. Also, I just asked Santa Claus for the DVD of their videos.
• Bloggingheads.tv goes beyond the usual arcane policy and political discussions by hosting a conversation on Art in a Poorer World. So now we know what Felix Salmon looks like.
• Related, Renewable Music points out epic changes occur as "long, slow burns."
• I remain captivated by this photo on the Dedicated To You But You Weren't Listening blog. Robotic, feminine and psychedelic.
• The Bay Area's KOFY Channel 20 is back, including reruns of The Streets of San Francisco.
• Weasels ripped Brian Olewnick's flesh via Eric Dolphy's barbeque, or something like that. The fact that Dolphy recorded with all of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Charles Mingus is interesting.

aworks five-star track alert :: The T.V. Bernard Herrmann

Image via Wikipedia
I don't remember this track from North by Northwest but it's a nice bit of ominous strings plus gratuitous but subtle percussion.

By the way, I watched a slice of Hitchcock's The Paradine Case on TCM tonight with the local eighty-six-year-old. Gregory Peck was so young. Wikipedia:

In 1946, it was announced that Alfred Hitchcock would direct the film, and that Laurence Olivier would star as the barrister, but Olivier eventually turned the project down, as he was preparing for his production of Hamlet. Hitchcock was also interested in Ronald Colman for the part, as well as Garbo (who had not yet turned down the project) or Ingrid Bergman for "Mrs. Paradine". Other actors who were considered for the film include: Maurice Evans, Joseph Cotten, Alan Marshal, James Mason for "Anthony Keane"; Hedy Lamarr for Mrs. Paradine; Claude Rains for "Lord Thomas Horfield"; and Robert Newton for Mrs. Paradine's lover. In the end, Hitchcock pushed for Gregory Peck, then at the peak of his box office appeal...

This post is is no way a slight of NxNW's Cary Grant, Hollywood's greatest actor.

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