« September 2010 | Main | November 2010 »
Ann Arbor Image via Wikipedia
It's the fiftieth anniversary of the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor, MI.
I bought the box set of this music awhile ago and it's been one of the hardest listens I've experienced, despite the talent of composers like Robert Ashley and Roger Reynolds.
The celebration includes a retrospective concert, with "1960 Ticket Prices," i.e. $2.
Via Avant Music News.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Conductor Marin Alsop on Samuel Barber and his Symphony No. 2:
There's intrigue, too. Why did Barber order the score of his Second Symphony (commissioned by the Armed Forces) to be destroyed? Fortunately, a set of parts was unearthed in the 1980s, and we are able to experience this piece firsthand today. Was he embarrassed in the 1960s by his association with the U.S. military? Or did he really feel that the piece was below his standard?
Flynt seems to have hit a nice balance of the simple and the cerebral. On Echo Rock:
Flynt does his best to compete with the electro-echo buzz of a Jorgen Ingmann or Link Wray
He was also one of those lucky ones to be in New York in the early 1960s:
I was inspired by the image which Ornette Coleman had at the beginning of his career: the image of the untrained “folk creature” as avant-gardiste. (An image celebrated in A. B. Spellman’s Four Lives in the Bebop Business, 1966.) At the same time that I was discovering Coleman’s records, in 1960, I met La Monte Young in person. In addition to being an avant-garde composer, Young was a state-of-the-art jazz saxophonist. I had to come to Manhattan, to the milieu presided over by John Cage, to hang out with a musician who had jazz chops.
Rdio.
Image via Wikipedia
Ok, back to more regular blogging after some playoff baseball, Disneyland, two-thousand-row spreadsheets for work, etc...
Hmm, the Pulitzer-winning Higdon Violin Concerto may be as good as they say. rdio
Viola finger chart via Wikipedia
This is what I'm currently streaming, which may or may not coincide with actual, attentive listening...
Image via Wikipedia
I'm listening again to the Grand Valley State recording of Terry Riley's In C. Unlike every other rendition, early on, it has a long, dynamic sax solo. Since I live close to the classical / jazz divide (albeit slightly on the notated side), I like this. But I have no idea of the aesthetic rationale.
As for the actual musicians, the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble is made up of some of the finest musicians. Each one is clearly heard with the saxophones shining brightly. Near the beginning, it is a lone sax that brings the music to a rousing climax before the ten-minute mark and later, around the forty-minute mark, the trumpet passes the lead to the sax for another wonderful excerpt.
Cover of Frédéric Chopin
It takes several minutes before he gets into it, but Richard Grayson plays Take the "A" Train in the style of a Chopin funeral march, via MetaFilter. A bit too grandiose, I think.
Rite of Spring in the style of Mozart is also odd. Then there's Chopsticks in the style of Charles Ives and Rhapsody in Blue Debussy style.
Copland image via Wikipedia
2010s
2000s
1990s
1960s
1950s
1940s
1920s
1200s
Image via Wikipedia
