The color of sound (and other ramblings)...

Synesthesia...
I've always been fascinated by synesthesia, a condition that causes people to experience sensation in one sense when another sense is stimulated (i.e. equating a C major chord with the color yellow). In the late 1800s, spurred by Freud and a fascination with the subconscious, many musicians were obsessed by the concept of synesthesia. It pops up a great deal in my thesis research. In fact, the keyboard at the top of this blog was created by composer/synesthete Alexander Scriabin based on his color/sound perception of each key. Anyway, a cool documentary by Jonathan Fowler on synesthesia was recently posted on boing boing. Check it out:



In other news...
Our president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Synesthesia or no, this is black and white, folks. No gray areas here. I'll admit, when I first heard the news, I was a bit shocked. Too early? Maybe. But as I continued to think about it, I realized Barack Obama was awarded a high honor for pursuing peace around the world. Pursuing. Not achieving. Sure, Gitmo is still open. But the president is working steadily to find a way to close it that is lawful and just. It is appropriate to honor someone who is actively seeking nuclear disarmament, an end to two wars, and peace in the middle east. Other Nobel Peace Prize winners did not end hunger or erase racism. They were rewarded for their work and tireless efforts in pursuit of those goals. I think we have a president right now who is tirelessly working toward peace.

And yes, we still don't have a health care bill and the economy is still struggling. I'm frustrated by these things too. But if I'm not mistaken, nobody suggested giving a Nobel Prize to the U.S. Congress. There are plenty of actual things republicans can be upset by right now (how are we going to handle Afghanistan? budget deficit, etc.). It is absurd to be angered by the fact that our president was honored for pursuing peace. Absurd and small-minded. It's time to stop playing the sore-loser card.

Last thing for the day...
In case you haven't heard, the (classical) music world is abuzz with excitement about the L.A. Phil's new conductor/music director, Gustavo Dudamel. We love him because he is hip and young, absurdly talented, and capable of generating some serious excitement about symphonic music. If there is anything the classical music world can always use, it is a little extra dash of youth and excitement. This weekend Dudamel started the season off with Mahler and a brand new Adams piece called, City Noir. You can listen to the whole thing (courtesy of NPR). Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning.

I love it when...

people boo at operas.

It's just such a snotty pseudo-conservative-opera-goer thing to do. Seriously, haven't we seen it all when it comes to opera at this point? Must we continue to feign shock, horror, and disdain in the face of innovation? You spent $1200 on your seat. If I were you, I'd be disappointed if I weren't shocked.

Life lessons 'n shit (or, a little late night pedagogical musing)...

I teach a lot of F*@&ing piano lessons every week. This week has seemed particularly long (which is probably why I used the F word to describe piano lessons...wonder how often that's been done...hm...)

Anyway, I was reminded today of something my piano pedagogy professor used to say in graduate school: "Always remember that you are not teaching piano, you are teaching people." He reiterated the same sentiment by telling us to, "teach the child first, music second, and the instrument third."

Like so much one learns in school, this is a concept that made sense to me in the abstract while I was sitting in the classroom but has become increasingly practical in the day-to-day grind of teaching.

There are days when teaching music history or teaching piano really is less about the subject or the instrument and more about the person sitting in front of me. Piano students have parents who get divorced and death touches everyone - regardless of age. College students raise children on their own while trying to put themselves through school. Some college kids even fight in wars - real ones - like, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And I find myself, in the midst of all the awful stuff that sometimes makes up people's lives, trying to convince a 19 year old that Baroque opera is worth a second listen or an 8 year old that articulation and the shape of a phrase matters.

I'm keenly aware that my role is that of music teacher not music therapist. There are brilliant music therapists in this world who are well-trained for that job. However, anyone who teaches music is mindful of the fact that because music is personal and because it so often elicits emotional responses, the teacher/therapist role is sometimes blurred. The only way around that reality, I'm convinced, would involve a dispassionate or clinical approach to one's students and one's subject.

I really have no conclusion or point to this little rant, except to say that this has been a long week. Oh, and that I think teaching music is important and that it makes a real difference in people's lives.

And one more thing...

I've been meaning to post the following quote from Alex Ross's insightful article from the New Yorker last month on fictional music/musicians in literature. Seems to fit here:

"When we listen deeply, we aren't simply registering music's ebb and flow; we are remaking music in our own image, investing minor details with private significance."

Investing minor details with private significance.

Exactly.

It's state fair time in Minnesota...

Yes, Minnesota...where Al Franken showed up and did this:



I'm impressed. I've watched this about six times tonight and while it isn't perfect (Tennessee for instance is a little stubby in his version), it's pretty damn good. Almost as impressive as winning that Senate seat, Mr. Franken...Now get back to work and get all 50 of those states some universal health care!

P.S. Just in case you haven't heard, this year at the Texas state fair one can consume (drum roll please) FRIED BUTTER. I kid you not. Fried butter.

Like I said, better pass that health care bill...

Hours and hours and hours of fun...

This just in (because I just found it):

Pitchfork listed its top 500 (yes, 500) songs of the 2000's. And they posted all 500 with MP3s. Go Crazy, kids!

(Just FYI, I think the Young Jeezy song "Go Crazy" is somewhere in the 300s. You know the one..."pop my collar then they swing they chain, all the gangstas in the street they be doin they thang...")

I'm going to stay up all night going through this list.

It's the freakin' weekend, baby, I'm bout to have me some fun....

(That was #19...)

Back to school blues (quote of the day)...

It's the first week of school and I'm dragging my heels a bit. I just had a really nice two weeks off and, as Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke can tell you, Reality Bites.

I spent a lot of time alone this summer and I think the sudden onslaught of students is overwhelming. All I want to do at the end of the day is sit in total silence and read. Feeling a tad like a hermit reminded me of this quote I heard on an episode of This American Life recently:

"Here's the thing about people: I don't really like them. That's why I find racism so curious. There are so many reasons to dislike people. You're gonna go with color? So I avoid the people whenever possible, try to keep my distance. It's really better for everyone."

~ Shalom Auslander

I never go to bed on time (or, ode to fast food chicken and beautiful men playing banjo)...

I never go to bed on time. Never. Ever. I'm not even terribly sure what time "on time" is, but I'm sure it has to be sometime before 3am. Especially when your alarm is set to go off around 7:30...

Anyway, the point of this post is actually to give you a little ear (and eye) candy in the form of a new video of an acoustic performance by the Avett Brothers (just posted on myoldkentuckyblog.com).

The Avett Brothers~Telling Time from LaundroMatinee on Vimeo.

Scott Avett has to be one of the best things North Carolina has ever given this world. Well, at least a very close third behind the first airplane and, of course, Bojangles Chicken 'n Biscuits. Actually, I could totally go for a BoBerry biscuit right now...or one of the cinnamon ones...oh man...a whole chicken basket is not a bad idea!

Now I'm starving.

Anyway, if you too suffer from insomnia and an insatiable appetite for cajun chicken biscuits, you should kill some time by watching the following clip. The second song they sing (around 7 minutes through) is my favorite ("things change and get strange with the movement of time...it's happening right now to you...down with the shine, the perfect shine, poisons the well, ruins my mind, i get took for a ride every time, down with the glistening shine.....")



And if you have never eaten at a Bojangles, get in your car right now and drive east young man, drive east. You won't regret it.

Healthcare debatable debacle (red state diaries seen and heard)...

I've been taking a bit of a break from blog land this month. What have I been doing, you ask? Well, in short, sleeping, drinking, and reading way too much about health care reform. So, Monday morning I decided to take a break from the sleeping and the drinking and participate a bit more actively in the debate. Texas senators Pete Sessions (R/Douchebag)and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D) met Monday morning in Dallas for what is believed to be the only bipartisan congressional debate on health care reform this month. As expected, the Texas republican party organized a protest outside the building where the debate was taking place. Along with my sister and a friend, I joined the "Silent Majority" counter-demonstration that (just FYI) had about twice as many people than the not-so-quiet minority against reform.





The whole thing was pretty peaceful. The pro-insurance reform demonstrators wore white shirts and marched quietly in a circle. A few of the anti-insurance reform people shouted a bit. My favorite was when a lady yelled at me and my friends, "Hey, you should be smiling. Hey, sheeple! Smile!" Sheeple? Odd.

We also got, "I hope you don't get cancer someday!" Um, er, thanks? Likewise, I'm sure.

But by far my favorite moment came when I took a break from the demonstration for a minute to run to my car. I was walking behind some Republican ladies holding "Say No To Obamacare!" signs and wrapped head to toe in American flag wear. I heard the following excerpt from their conversation...

"Well, I am really lucky right now because I'm still on my husband's insurance plan and he's got a good one that covers me too."

Yes, lady. You are lucky. Here's hoping your husband doesn't lose his job. I imagine if that happened, and you didn't have a job, you just might be interested in a public healthcare option that wouldn't deny you based on any pre-existing conditions...

Maybe not, but I'm just sayin'...

I know this is the opposite of feminism...

But I love Mad Men:



Don Draper. Le sigh...

"That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight...

Losing My Religion..." No, that's not a link to an R.E.M. song, but rather to an interesting article this week by Jimmy Carter outlining his reasons for leaving the Southern Baptist Church (yay! better late than never, prez!).

In his own words: "It was an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service."

My only complaint about this article is that he so broadens the issue - covering more obvious instances of religious abuses of women's rights - that the subtleties of inequality in the denomination he has abandoned are barely addressed. While the issues he discusses are incredibly important and need to be payed more attention, I think he misses an opportunity to shed light on more hidden pathways of discrimination. It is often the subtle forms of suppression and oppression that go unnoticed and the views of the SBC on women are a perfect example of the kind of discrimination that is deeply ingrained in southern religious culture and deeply damaging to women.

And yet again...

...it is 102. One hundred-freaking-two.

Dear Texas,
In the words of New Edition, cool it now.

Actually not bad advice in general, people.

Dear Mr. South Carolina...

You, over there...the one in the senate...not the one with the Argentinian lover. Mr. L-Graham-R-S.C., you are obnoxious on so very many fronts. But I just wanted to let you know, every time I've heard this clip over the last few days, these are the thoughts that go through my head:



1. Listening to you talk is actually the one thing that could make an intelligent, tolerant, cool-headed judge, have a "complete meltdown."

2. The "drama's being created here" by your Republican colleagues is not "inneresting." It is shallow political play.

3. I feel unnerved by your speeches and by some of the things that you've said...

4. When it comes to your speeches, that is the most troubling thing to me...because you are a U.S. Senator and when you speak, you sound ignorant and arrogant. And that is a scary combination.

Also, Sotomayor's poker face just after the "meltdown" comment is priceless like a mastercard...

And I was just thinking, "You know, people don't dress up like 19th-century opera composers enough these days..."

Thank god for Rufus Wainwright! If nobody else remembers to grow a beard and dress up like Guiseppe Verdi, he's got us covered...

(Wainwright)


(Verdi)

In case you didn't know, Rufus Wainwright wrote an opera. I know. For real. And it's called "Prima Donna." (Or, when art imitates life...) I just got around to reading the NYTimes review and this is my favorite part:

"Sure enough, while a crowd milled in the lobby before the performance, Mr. Wainwright arrived meticulously made up as Verdi, in a formal 19th-century black suit, complete with white silk scarf, black top hat and a bushy beard grown for the occasion. Mr. Wainwright’s companion, Jorn Weisbrodt, a German theater director, was dressed as a young Puccini in a cream-colored summer suit and a straw hat. The crowd erupted with applause, and lights flashed as people took pictures."

I find the whole thing highly amusing. Wainwright just seems like a really bored, really odd guy who happens to have the time and money to indulge his fantasy of being an amazing opera composer. So props to him for doing it up right (authentic beard and all) and making a spectacle of the thing (and also props to him for writing the libretto himself...in French). Let's be honest though, he probably isn't musically cut out for the task at hand. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong...

Anyway, happy Bastille Day! Eat a croissant!

Shoes on my feet, I bought 'em (or, happy 4th o' July)...

Happy Birthday, USofA...what is this, 233? I guess you're lookin' pretty good for your age. Perhaps a bit broke at the moment, but you'll bounce back. What with your inventive entrepreneurship, your future really is bright!

Case in point:



And just FYI, this is how my brain works...it is independence day, so I've had this song in my head ALL DAY!



Really though, what's more American that Destiny's Child?
(Answer: Apple pie and baseball. But Destiny's Child is a close third...)

"Spent a week in a dusty library..."

Well, maybe not a week, but at least a day.

Today was my bi-monthly day-before-thesis-meeting-scramble-day and I found myself in the west stacks of SMU's main library digging around for the writings of Wagner on Beethoven. (Incredible that those two have anything to do with a thesis on late-nineteenth century cabaret music, but you know, theses tend to meander into unexpected territory....) Anyway, in case your travels haven't taken you to said stacks, you should know SMU's Fondren library has these weird half-level "west stacks" that are shoved in between the regular floors. They are out of the way and scary and dusty and dark and have really low ceilings and one gets the feeling you'd never be found if, say, a shelf toppled over and pinned you down...



I've never visited these stacks in the daylight. I've always been there at some god forsaken time of night right before a paper was due. While still scary, it's not nearly as cave-like by day. Actually, not a bad place to escape the hot Texas sun.



I've loved Camera Obscura so long and so hard (oh, you Glaswegians and your good bands) and their new album is just as good as the old...in case you haven't heard French Navy...

French Navy - Camera Obscura

And now, back to work...

Not like other guys...

Given that I was born in 1982, Thriller was a bit before my time - about a month before my time to be exact. Regardless, didn't we all grow up on MJ? (yes, yes, we did) I felt like those songs had just come out in the early 90s when I started sneaking behind my parents back and watching the videos on MTV (my parents were totally against MTV, clearly. corruption central, that place!).

One of my secret dreams in life has always been to one day be nonchalantly sifting through a t-shirt rack in a thrift store and happen across the piano key shirt Michael's wearing at the beginning of the Beat It video. As a nerdy kid taking piano lessons, that t-shirt confirmed to me on some level that my hobby must be cool.



I found it hilarious that the black keys were distributed incorrectly on the keyboard. SO FUNNY, Michael, SO FUNNY! He totally got my sense of humor.

Of course, in my dream, the shirt I find in the thrift store is the shirt - Michael's shirt - not just some cafe press wanna be version. (It should be noted that I also fantasize about uncovering an original Debussy manuscript in the depths of the depths of the basement of the Bibliotheque nationale...but who doesn't dream about that?). If I keep hanging out in libraries and thrift stores, I'm bound to happen upon some kind of historically significant musical artifact at some point, right? Rabbit trail...

Anyway, it's a sad day.

Michael Jackson - Beat It | Music Videos | SPIKE.com

Two disturbing realities (or, red state diaries)...

Disturbing/uncomfortable thing number one:



Disturbing/uncomfortable thing number two:

Conservative rap.

Still gOOgling Stravinsky...

So it seems the author of every music blog I read made some comment yesterday about Google's Stravinsky banner. Oh, fellow classical musicians, we are a desperate little crew! We get so excited when someone (anyone!) in the "real world" notices something important to us and we just have to comment ("We're still here! Our music matters too!! Look, Google says so - that's the internet folks!").

Anyway, this is my favorite google/stravinsky/banner/commentary blog-post. Well done, MMmusing, I am particularly fond of the double O-O glasses...

Happy Birthday to you (or, Google does Stravinsky)...

Good old google. You can always count on them to remind you of important events. Today they attempted to wish Igor Stravinsky a joyeux anniversaire.

I say attempted because, well, see for yourself...



Cute Firebird. Whatever. But floating music notes (can I get a cliché up in this house, what, what)? And if the caterpillar and the daisies are supposed to conjure up images of The Rite of Spring, I think the artist missed the whole pagan-ritual part of that ballet...


(Oh, how I love you, Vaslav Nijinsky...)

Of course, here is the Rite of Spring via your childhood (thanks, Walt Disney!). And speaking of Disney, I love Salonen and the L.A. Philharmonic's version for the Walt Disney Hall inauguration in 2003.

But really, this is why I love Stravinsky...



How do you say happy birthday in Russian?

On empty apartments (or, strange things will happen if you let them)...

I love sitting in an empty apartment. There's something about a fresh start...just a room...before all the shit that makes up life crowds the space.

I'm moving in a couple weeks and last night I went over to my new (empty) apartment to measure the walls and make sure I can actually fit an organ and a piano in my one-room place. I ended up just sitting on the floor for a while. It reminded me...

...of when I was 16 and I moved away from the house where I grew up.
...of when I moved to Dallas to start grad school and had no furniture (Literally. My couch was an air mattress with pillows against the wall and my TV was on the floor. That was the "living room").

When I lived in that first Texas apartment by myself I used to listen to this song all the time at night. It's super cheesy, but you know, so is this post!



"Today was a pretty day,
No disappointments,
No expectations on your whereabouts,
And oh, did I let you go?
Did it finally show that strange things will happen if you let them.

Today I didn't even try to hide,
I'll stay here and never push things to the side,
You can't reach me cause I'm way beyond you today.

Today was a pretty day,
Autumn comes with
These slight surprises where your life might twist and turn,
Hope to unlearn,
Strange things will happen if you let them come around and stick around."