aworks :: "new" american classical music

lala's last 31 days :: day 31 /la la la la.../

From the early days of CD trading until tonight's presumably last stream, lala was fun:

2006

• Goin' Home (1964). Albert Ayler /seeking out new music/
• Music for 18 Musicians (1974-6). Steve Reich /bbc four tet remix/

2007

• Come Out (1966). Steve Reich /la la la la.../ 
• The Well-Tuned Piano (1964/73/81/present). La Monte Young /into the cloud legally?/

2008

• 600 Lines (for ensemble) (1968). Philip Glass /wait, there's more/
• Summertime (1935). George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin /surprisingly fine/
• Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings (2005). Steve Reich /next la la/
• links for 2008-05-30
• Change of the Century (1959). Ornette Coleman /or at least for this week/
• aworks project :: lala snooping 

2009

• Appalachian Spring (1944-45). Aaron Copland /via obama and williams/
• aworks ordered cloud :: most played last.fm tags 
• beyond aworks :: "Will Critique for Food" 
• aworks ordered list :: interesting tracks on lala, before it's too late 
• California Dreamin' (1965). John and Michelle Phillips /worth at least 20 cents/ 
• Ask Me Now (1951). Thelonious Monk /this modern world/
• Symphony No. 3 (1958). Ned Rorem /despite no scrobbling.../ 
• Rhythm-a-Ning (1957?). Thelonious Monk /via lala via google via kronos quartet/ 
• Rumple (2003). Cornelius Boots /vibrational fictions of lucid dementia/
• beyond aworks :: pitchfork top 10 albums of the decade /half new, half fossil/
• Men (2005). David Lang /ten cents/
• aworks ordered list :: notable listening #1 /freight train? indiana? microtonal riley? doors do gershwin?/ 
• Digital Loom (2005). Mason Bates /preconceived notions of goodness/

2010

• lala's last 31 days

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lala's last 31 days :: day 31 /rhapsody in the lead/

Elton John via last.fm

On what is presumably the last day for lala, I'm looking at the streaming alternatives. To compare, I'll do the John Adams test i.e. the number of John Adams albums at various sites:

• 61 Rhapsody 
• 31 lala 
• 28 Napster 
• 17 MOG - Give or take; presumably since I haven't subscribed yet, I can't get a definitive artist listing. And here's what may be my one and only mog from three years ago.
• 10 Grooveshark - Again, give or take. Not all albums are complete and the results are mixed in with the multitude of other John Adams as well as Oleta Adams singing the music of Elton John.
• 4 BlueBeat
• ??? hype machine - The results are jumbled, to say the least. This site is good for finding Radiohead cover versions and remixes, however.
• ??? YouTube - Even more jumbled results.
• 0 iTunes - No streaming, at least so far, by the acquirer of lala. They are graciously granting iTunes credit for all purchased web tracks.

lala's last 31 days :: day 30 /of the metal variety/

Before lala shuts down (tomorrow!), I am madly rushing to listen to 195 more tracks to see which ones I want to repurchase. 

The Metaux movement of Xenakis' Pleiades is so strangely pleasing, given that it is percussion music of the metal variety...

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Yale version of Metaux on YouTube: 

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• "If they [Apple] do provide a streaming service of some kind, it will be another walled garden. You stream on our terms, you stream only the content we allow, on the devices we allow (H.264) and we would very much like to collect some data about you." OSNews
• "IT WAS THE FIRST TRULY SOCIAL MUSIC SERVICE. While Lala took a little while to get its footing, when it finally did, it was nothing short of magical." ShortFormBlog

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Update: The Cardigans covering Black Sabbath's Iron Man is also a treat.

The Ring (19th century). Richard Wagner /via ramon sender and david ocker/

Wagner via Wikipedia

Mixed Meters takes on Wagner's Ring:

Wagner's Ring is not a "problem" for opera queens and ring nerds. More power to them. But it can be a huge issue for an avant garde composer trying to face the unknown future of music who resents being pursued from behind by the continuing popularity and influence of this massive and vicious Romantic era monster.

He also manages to link Wagner to developments at the old San Francisco Tape Music Center, resulting in "the entire Ring, at pitch, in seven minutes." 

Dare I say this is now my favorite version. Visit his blog to listen for yourself.

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Roaratorio (1979). John Cage /extraordinarily obsessive/

Cage & Cunningham via Wikipedia

John Cage's Roaratorio will be presented next week in LA as part of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's Legacy Tour. Mark Swed:

An eight-channel surround-sound installation has been made from the original materials and will be used. However much live performers are missed, this new multitrack recording of all the original performers and the electronic soundscape effectively replicates the extraordinarily obsessive and excessive nature of Cage's work.

lala's last 31 days :: day 28 /the energy never dies/

Cover of E.N.D. (The Energy Never Dies)

Here are the web streams I purchased that are good enough that I am repurchasing them from lala in MP3 format before the site goes offline Monday. To Apple's credit, they will be granting credit at the iTunes store for the equivalent of what people spent on streaming lala tracks.

• The Anvil Chorus. David Lang. Joseph Gramley - American Deconstruction. It took a decade but I can now enjoy this percussion work.
• Aaron Copland (From "13 Portraits For Piano"). Virgil Thomson. Leo Smits - A Crazy Quilt Of American Piano Music. Tracks with musician names in the title still interest me. See also John McLaughlin by Miles Davis from Bitches Brew.
• El Salon Mexico. Aaron Copland. Talkin' Verve: Lalo Schifrin. Jazz swing version.
• Ez Street Ext. Moon Duo - Ez Street Ext. Wooden Shjips side project.
• Summertime. The Doors - Live At The Matrix. "When the music's over / Turn out the Lights". Wait, that's a different song.
• The Noise Between Thoughts and Washed by Fire. Keeril Makan. Kronos Quartet - In Sound
• Threads. Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band - In Sound
• Boom Boom Pow. Black Eyed Peas - THE E.N.D. (THE ENERGY NEVER DIES). Souvenir from the recent 4th grade father/daughter dance.
• Heart Shaped Box (Nirvana). Christopher O'Riley. O'Riley's best rock piano interpretation?
• North By Northwest: “The Wild Ride”. Bernard Herrmann. The 5 Browns In Hollywood. The 5 Brown's best popular classical piano interpretation?
• Lovely. Marghreta Cordero / Melody Sumner Carnahan - The Time Is Now. I found the used CD since I bought this track. Also music by Robert Ashley, Elodie Lauten and others.
• Downtown. Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. - Like A Duck To Water. I also heard this last month on Pandora.

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Uh oh, it looks like the Rasputin Music store in Mountain View (i.e. the former Tower Records store) is up for lease again. 

lala's last 31 days :: day 27 /on music choice/

John Fahey via last.fm

We are almost done with lala and for me anyway, it is going away with a whimper. I don't think I'm going to make it through all of the six hundred songs I bought and I haven't made a last dash to listen to all those things I've been meaning to before time is up. 

All in all, the demise of lala has been nowhere near as fun as the progressive sales at the end of Tower Music. Oh well.

Recent listens that still strike my interest:

• Anything by Dr. Lonnie Smith, even the Beck covers.
• Lowell Lieberman piano music.
• Joshua Rifkin does Baroque Beatles.
• John Fahey plays Layla.
• "World" music by Jordi Savall.

Other things I would listen to if I have enough time:

• Via Calimac, an old favorite including Decomposing Composers.
• the "new" Rolling Stones album
• El Nuevo Mundo by Jordi Savall
• music by Timothy Andres

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lala's last 31 days :: day 23 /grooveshark and bluebeat/

I tried a couple of alternatives to lala today. 

Grooveshark is fine for general composer queries e.g. play a bunch of Philip Glass tracks. But I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. 

BlueBeat has an iPhone app that claims to stream at up to 160 kbps and although it had an obscure track from Benjamin Boretz, the library may be weak. 

If I had to make a decision today, I"d probably sign up for a Mog subscription, especially if they come out with an iPhone app. We'll see if I actually do that once lala is gone.

Keyboard Study No. 1 (1965). Terry Riley /cool/

HurdAudio blogs about a recording of Terry Riley keyboard music by Steffen Schleiermacher:

Electronically aided interpretations of the early Terry Riley compositions as a labor of love. A love of the static textures and pulsating beauty that erupts through the fine details of repeated patterns sliding apart from one another.

I have numerous Terry Riley recordings and numerous Steffen Schleiermacher recordings and somehow, I know nothing of the intersection of these two fine artists. 

A quick check shows these are not readily available for download from emusic or Amazon (although on CD from the latter). And highlighting yet another hole in my collection, Amazon also has a different CD of Riley keyboard music, this time by the Italian Fabrizio Ottaviucci.

Keith Potter on the work: 

Keyboard Study no. 1 was also called Coule; the title is a pun on the French word for 'flowing' or 'gliding' (or in musical terminology, the 'slur' as a phrase marking), and Riley pronounces it, as though without its acute accent. 'Cool', a term of colloquial approbation still new when the piece was first conceived.

YouTube has a video that presumably uses the music from one of these recordings:

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). Bernard Herrmann /even on a good day/

Bernard Herrmann via last.fm

Via The Buzzing Read, the article Great Moments in Film Orchestration History: Bernard Herrmann, from Film Music Magazine, includes this:

In “Journey To The Center Of The Earth,” (20th Century Fox, 1959) there are two standout uses of unusual color becoming a dramatic element. In a scene involving a giant snake, Herrmann coaxed a low, unsteady moaning effect out of an Renaissance instrument called, appropriately, a serpent. The bass member of the cornetto family, it is a woodwind with a brass-type mouthpiece and recorder-like finger holes, and using a tuba embouchure. Even on a good day it has trouble producing a stable, centered tone.

By the way, there are a zillion active film composers I hadn't heard of before. From that list, I did know of Daft Punk, James Newton Howard, and a couple of others although I wasn't aware that Ennio Morricone's son is a composer.

Last night, we watched East of Eden. FYI, there is a recording of John Adams conducting the music of Leonard Rosenman. 

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