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Except for the electric guitar, Film Music Magazine finds the soundtrack for The Twilight Saga: New Moon similar to something by Bernard Herrmann:
NEW MOON’s antecedent seems as much Bernard Herrmann’s JANE EYRE as it does more darkly romantic Jarre stuff like THE COLLECTOR. Two beautifully moody themes are heard in just about every other cue, and they’re melodies that never get tired as they flits from subtle pianos and strings to a full, stormy orchestra.
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Mark Swed doesn't have much good to say about the most recent production and recording of Nixon in China, at least compared to the original by director Peter Sellars:
...watching a cutesy, ham-fisted attempt at literalism from a fanciful opera proved hardly revelatory when I saw this production five years ago in St. Louis.
Fortunately, Carpenter’s self-serving rewriting of history isn’t likely to have much effect. Sellars' production is, after 22 years, still with us. Crowds flocked to it, and critics celebrated it, when staged in London a couple of seasons ago. And long last, the Met will mount Sellars' production next season, with Adams on the podium.
Cover of Brilliant Corners
Amazon has announced the upcoming release of The Complete Columbia Album Collection -- 70 CDs and 1 DVD representing the entire Columbia Records catalog of Miles Davis for $293.49.
This evening, I happen to have been listening to pre-Columbian Miles but this announcement gets my attention. But when lala has 273 Miles albums available for free streaming, it seems rather indulgent.
Beck via Wikipedia
Beck has his tribute to Harry Partch up on his website. Even better, he has some streams of music by Harry Partch. I think this is great but maybe it's just a California thing...
Lyrics:
making up your orchestra out of the debris of the evening
fishing out from the gutter all your gold and grey graffiti
And stereogum describes the track:
It sounds like a demented mashup revue of the last century's popular, classical and avant garde music forms, with a little outer space thrown in for good measure.
Here's a gamelan version of In a Landscape:
In A Landscape - Gamelan Pacif...
It's hard to top the piano for this classic piece but this version is otherworldly enough to be of interest.
Also, as we saw yesterday via Disquiet, Gamelan Pacifica has other tracks hosted on SoundCloud. That player allows time-based comments on the stream:
What is a timed comment and how is it different to a regular comment?
When you’re checking out a song on SoundCloud, you’ll have a visual representation of the music (a waveform). By placing a comment directly on the waveform, it allows you to say something about the structure of the track. Let’s say you like the track that’s playing, but you feel the extra rhodes lick that kicks in 2’33 is out of tune. You can then place a comment on that moment that reads something like : « the song is great, but that rhodes is way out of tune !
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On first listen, the eight double basses of Stronghold stunned me...Henry Flynt is a philosopher and avant-garde musician... Town with No Cheer is the cover version by actress Scarlett Johansson. I honestly like this; on the other hand, her version of I Wish I Was in New Orleans is bizarre...I listened to almost no Thelonious Monk today.
On yet another trip to the San Francisco Palace of Recorded Arts, it occurred to me I buy lots of music and listen to lots of it. But most turns out to be ephemeral, uninteresting, unworthy of repeated listening, not really new etc. So now I'm going to see what happens when I log the music that really captures my attention:
These Are My Twisted Words is a new (and free) download... Utterance is a mildly harsh yet satisfying piece for string quartet from an intriguing new CD, New Music from San Diego...David Lang's music is often unattractive on the surface but profoundly visceral the more I listen. Of course, The Little Match Girl Passion won the Pulitzer and has a December performance in SF...This YouTube of The Anvil Chorus by Ty Forquer rocks... The Cat nicely combines organ and big band....Ironically, In a Landscape is an ambient work that rewards without requiring close attention...I listened to 17 versions of Epistrophy the other day. I'm convinced Monk is half painstaking craftsman and half genius. And my favorite cover version is the one where Archie Shepp nonchalantly blows through the changes...
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100 best jazz albums of all time, including three from this century. (Martin Gayford/Telegraph)
#100 from that list, a 2009 recording. Yawn. (lala)
Chamber Music American to honor Chick Corea (NewMusicBox)
Chick Corea's entry on the top 100 jazz list. (lala)
Alvin Lucier says he wasn't good enough to play jazz so he studied classical instead. It occurs to me his music may be as far away as you can get from frenetic jazz improvisation. (Weslyan Argus via Avant Music News)
Henry Cowell/Open Minds coverage in the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend either concert this week. (Brett Campbell/WSJ).
"Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman is, we hear, a sumptuous documentary about the accomplished Californian architectural photographer who captured the work of nearly every modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Frank Gehry." (BerkeleySide)
