Sometimes when a theme presents itself, the best action is to run with it!
Some students operate on a different level from the others, hearing music in unique ways. I believe that it’s important for them to fully grasp the typical theories, if only so that they may understand the enemy against which they someday will rebel.
Some would argue that it is neurologically impossible to tune yourself out in order to truly perceive someone else’s thoughts. I’m not a scientist so I won’t go there, but nevertheless I will concede that there are other insurmountable limitations which have to do with our own temporal existence.
One of the things that a recent debate confirmed for me is that there exists a group of very creative musicians who believe that rap music is devoid not only of melody and chord changes, but of socio-political messaging as well.
Amplification, it turns out, is a fine line, and the amplification of this particular concert left me in the position of feeling critical towards a program on which, paradoxically, I actually liked a lot of the music itself.
Vessel, a recent concert presented by the Convergence Vocal Ensemble, featured an evening of commissions for four voices combined with a variety of instrumental combinations, including new instruments created specifically for this event. But what was that air compressor for?
Chosen from a pool of 165 candidates through a competitive process, the composers will be in Minneapolis from January 7-11, 2013, for rehearsals, seminars, and tutoring sessions, as well as a public “Future Classics” concert of their works on January 11.
For a while it seemed to me like every successful composer was telling the same story about their working habits—get up early in the morning, maybe have breakfast, then write music for several hours straight. It’s funny how this pattern used to feel like a prison to me, and now it feels like a vacation.
Composer, sound artist, and performer Brenda Hutchinson is a natural storyteller. Her great love is documenting the stories and interactions of others, creating oral histories that reveal the transformative power of everyday moments.
I attempt to channel the spirit of Duchamp in order to accept even those accidents that seem disastrous at first blush as possible windows opening towards new opportunities.
ToneCraft—a musical toolkit that takes advantage of Web Audio API as a workspace for free composition—provides a fantastic metaphor for introducing unwitting normal people to the zany world of composing, albeit one that is far too limited for anything beyond some rudimentary dabbling.
As I’ve stated before, for me, listening is an act of submission; it’s about tuning myself out in order to experience something else on its own terms to the best of my ability. But this “act of submission” cannot be a selfless one; it requires a desire to do so. It’s voluntary; if it’s involuntary, it doesn’t really work.
The topics of engraving and notation software that I’ve touched on over the past few weeks did not seem to want to go to bed this week, so I thought I’d give an update on each one. I’ve also included some of the more extensive portions of the discussion that occurred on my own Facebook profile.
There has been a pernicious fallacy that music sets up moods and can be used for the control of the masses. The arts can enhance the methods used to shape the thinking and actions of groups of people, but cannot be equated as a method for doing so.
Doing anything in Austin in the summer can be a bit of a drag, but checking out week after week of top notch chamber players is a pretty spectacular way to pass the time. This annual three-week festival has developed over the years by taking its broad and general title quite literally. It’s not summer classics, new music, or jazz; it’s all that and more.
As we approach the Pierrot Lunaire centennial, its instrumentation, once reflective of Viennese weltschmerz, has been internationalized, turned timeless, and endured both modernism and postmodernism. Briefly tracing its legacy reveals a story of artists grappling with tradition as well as practical realities.
My main issue with the traditional concert ritual is not that it’s intimidating, necessarily, but that it’s based on an unspoken and faulty assumption.
There’s a tension between the natural world songbirdsongs is meant to evoke and the artificial means of the evocation that gives the music an interesting texture. Lovely things happen in every movement of the piece, but in a way that is meant to feel accidental and found, rather than designed and anticipated.
My current engagement with performing began as a way of overcoming barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration. By responding to artistic impetuses with sounds that I was able to physically produce in the moment, I was able to share in the genesis of installations and events.
Chalk it up to the fact that I grew up in midtown Manhattan, but silences somehow seem unnatural to me since I so rarely have heard them.
It can be so easy to think of music as existing separately from the society it’s performed in, as if it weren’t a cultural phenomenon.
There are still those who feel that handwritten manuscript is a viable option today, but they are mistaken; performers and conductors have become acclimated to engraved scores and parts over the past twenty years and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who will put up with anything other than clear, engraved performance materials.
Ralph Jackson is a kind of sage, a savant with an uncanny gift for seeing beyond superficial complexities into the real essence of a situation. Ralph’s perspective is always insightful, often provocative. It is never predictable. Ever.
It’s pretty geeky to write, think, or read about fonts. But if you’re composing notated music, trust me, paying attention to fonts won’t make you any more of a geek than you already are—and you’ll likely reap some great benefits as a result.
