The thing about live music - in any genre - is that the experience is completely different when you know the band/composer's music by heart and when you are hearing it for the first time live. Both experiences are great. Some of my favorite music is music I "discovered" live. Then there are those pieces you think you know, but when you hear them live your perception of them completely changes. I used to hate Bolero (boring, monotonous, didactic, blah, blah) until I saw an incredibly convincing performance that completely enthralled me. I was shocked...imagine...enthralled by Bolero. I'd probably heard that piece 100 times and never cared for it. But I will never forget that concert. You get my point...it's in the delivery.
I've seen a couple shows the last few weeks that I enjoyed on very different levels. Last night was Grizzly Bear at Granada with 1,100+ of my closest friends and a heat index of 104. I'm exaggerating. But no, really, it was fucking hot. The whole show was fantastic despite the not-great view and the sweaty stench (why are boys so tall and smelly? gross). One unexpected favorite moment last night was "Fine for Now." I like that song on the album, but live, I didn't want it to end...
Lyrics: "If we're all faltering, why'd I help with that?"
Two more things (and I'll stop gushing):
1. All four musicians in this band are equally strong and truly hold their own in a live show. There really is no weak link and no real star. Just four solid and multi-talented musicians. In that way (and also because of their seamless vocal harmonies), it reminded me of what hearing the Beatles live must've been like. Also like the Beatles, they delivered obtuse and complex melodies, harmonies, and rhythms in a completely accessible manner.
2. Ed Droste playing the autoharp. I played the autoharp when I was a kid. One can usually find an autoharp floating around in the choir rooms of rural Baptist churches and my mom used to play it in Sunday School. That's it, I'm getting one. So portable! Droste gave a very convincing autoharp performance.
I just got tired. I was going to write about Bonnie Prince Billy's live performance of "A King at Night" and my first impressions of PVC Street Gang , but I give up. I'd say "more later," but let's be honest...I rarely follow through...
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Block partay (or, my favorite news story of the week)...
As you may have heard, Tetris turned 25 yesterday.
(cue theme)
The music, like the game, is Russian of course. Actually, it is based on a Russian folk song called Korobeiniki. Here is an orchestrated version of the folk tune with balalaika and accordion.
But why stop there? People have way too much time on their hands to stop there. Let the games begin!
The Tetris theme...
With humans.
With legos.
With church.
With glass bottles.
With porn.
(cue theme)
The music, like the game, is Russian of course. Actually, it is based on a Russian folk song called Korobeiniki. Here is an orchestrated version of the folk tune with balalaika and accordion.
But why stop there? People have way too much time on their hands to stop there. Let the games begin!
The Tetris theme...
With humans.
With legos.
With church.
With glass bottles.
With porn.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Video killed the radio star...
I like music videos. They are like opera. What is better than one art form? Two or three art forms combined. (Gesamtkunstwerk, baby!)
Anyway, I was thinking recently that music videos are powerful things (this is all relative of course...i mean powerful the way microwaves cook food, not the way jesus saves or obama gives you hope). For instance, there is this song that I love and have loved for several months now. It is a really good song. It doesn't get old. I play it on the piano and I still love it. I listen in my car. Still love it. But the video creeps me out. I hate the video so much that watching it actually made me like the song less. Even when I'm just listening, I see it in my head.
Creepy.
On the flip side, I have probably watched this next video 40 times.
It could be disturbing. Bloody masked people. War. But it is a good video. It's the choreography. Great choreography. It makes me like the song more.
What do you think? Agree? Disagree?
P.S. Daniel Rossen is in both bands. I love his voice and his music but I do wonder if he has nightmares...
Anyway, I was thinking recently that music videos are powerful things (this is all relative of course...i mean powerful the way microwaves cook food, not the way jesus saves or obama gives you hope). For instance, there is this song that I love and have loved for several months now. It is a really good song. It doesn't get old. I play it on the piano and I still love it. I listen in my car. Still love it. But the video creeps me out. I hate the video so much that watching it actually made me like the song less. Even when I'm just listening, I see it in my head.
Creepy.
On the flip side, I have probably watched this next video 40 times.
It could be disturbing. Bloody masked people. War. But it is a good video. It's the choreography. Great choreography. It makes me like the song more.
What do you think? Agree? Disagree?
P.S. Daniel Rossen is in both bands. I love his voice and his music but I do wonder if he has nightmares...
Thursday, May 28, 2009
In memory...
I found out this week that my thesis adviser and the chair of the Music History department at SMU, Dr. Donna Mayer-Martin, passed away on Sunday, May 24th. I've felt a wide range of emotions over the last few days. Dr. M-M was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year but her death was sudden and unexpected.
I began studying musicology midway through my masters degree in piano performance and pedagogy mostly because of her influence, inspiration, and encouragement. It is a strange feeling to know she'll never read my completed thesis - a document covered with her fingerprints on a subject inspired by her passion for both medieval and nineteenth-century French culture and music.
The last time I saw my teacher and adviser we spent a day together at her house eating croissants from her favorite bakery and talking about music, my thesis, life, and books. I was able to give her a letter that day letting her know what she meant to me and I had the opportunity to say goodbye. I'm very grateful for that experience. She told me then that just in case her treatment did not go as planned she had compiled a list of the music she wanted played at her memorial service.
It was harder and more emotional than I had expected to hear that music in a small campus chapel today at a truly beautiful service in her memory. Here is a quote I included in the note I gave her and a piece that was sung today (an excerpt from G. Fauré's Requiem that has long been a favorite of mine).
We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”
~ Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space
FAURE: REQUIEM, OP. 48: IV. PIE JESU - PLASSON/TOULOUSE ORCHESTRA
"Merciful Lord Jesus, Grant them rest, rest everlasting."
I began studying musicology midway through my masters degree in piano performance and pedagogy mostly because of her influence, inspiration, and encouragement. It is a strange feeling to know she'll never read my completed thesis - a document covered with her fingerprints on a subject inspired by her passion for both medieval and nineteenth-century French culture and music.
The last time I saw my teacher and adviser we spent a day together at her house eating croissants from her favorite bakery and talking about music, my thesis, life, and books. I was able to give her a letter that day letting her know what she meant to me and I had the opportunity to say goodbye. I'm very grateful for that experience. She told me then that just in case her treatment did not go as planned she had compiled a list of the music she wanted played at her memorial service.
It was harder and more emotional than I had expected to hear that music in a small campus chapel today at a truly beautiful service in her memory. Here is a quote I included in the note I gave her and a piece that was sung today (an excerpt from G. Fauré's Requiem that has long been a favorite of mine).
We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”
~ Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space
FAURE: REQUIEM, OP. 48: IV. PIE JESU - PLASSON/TOULOUSE ORCHESTRA
"Merciful Lord Jesus, Grant them rest, rest everlasting."
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
This guy does not look like Igor...
Admittedly, this movie (that closed the Cannes festival this week) looks a tad predictable and tedious and I'm not terribly impressed with Mad Mikkelsen's Stravinsky from the little you see of him in this trailer. Regardless, I can't wait to see it, if only for the first 30 seconds of the preview. After that, meh...
The 1913 premier of Le Sacre du Printemps is one of the most famously dramatic artistic events in history and is a great setting for the beginning of a film.
"We warred over art," wrote the New York Press critic, Carl Van Vechten in his account of the evening.
Interestingly, in Rites of Spring, Modris Eksteins suggests that while there was certainly an uprising of sorts, the audience's response may not have been as impassioned as is often suggested. In fact, he points out that several "first hand accounts" are likely fabricated. "Some people," Eksteins points out, "like Gertrude Stein, so captivated, even if in restrospect, by this early twentieth-century "happening," have implied that they were present when they clearly were not. Can one blame them? To have been in the audience that evening was to have participated not simply at another exhibition but in the very creation of modern art, in that the response of the audeince was and is as important to the meaning of this art as the intentions of those who introduced it."
The 1913 premier of Le Sacre du Printemps is one of the most famously dramatic artistic events in history and is a great setting for the beginning of a film.
"We warred over art," wrote the New York Press critic, Carl Van Vechten in his account of the evening.
Interestingly, in Rites of Spring, Modris Eksteins suggests that while there was certainly an uprising of sorts, the audience's response may not have been as impassioned as is often suggested. In fact, he points out that several "first hand accounts" are likely fabricated. "Some people," Eksteins points out, "like Gertrude Stein, so captivated, even if in restrospect, by this early twentieth-century "happening," have implied that they were present when they clearly were not. Can one blame them? To have been in the audience that evening was to have participated not simply at another exhibition but in the very creation of modern art, in that the response of the audeince was and is as important to the meaning of this art as the intentions of those who introduced it."
Aleatoric minimalism (a la YouTube)...
It's like Terry Riley a whole step lower. DO try this one at home, kids.
Click here.
Oh, and this is fun, too.
Click here.
Oh, and this is fun, too.
On fines and fees...
Rules. I like them. I make them all the time. For instance,"I can only eat ice cream once a week this summer," or "I am not allowed to download anything else on iTunes until July," or "I will stop using so many ellipses in emails and blogs."
You get the point.
Probably the only thing I enjoy more than making rules is breaking them. One of my biggest rules is, in fact, that all of my rules are meant to be broken at least on occasion. Afterall, according to one of my favorite clichés, rules were made for that distinct purpose.
This month my trusty always-break-the-rules rule bit me in the proverbial ass. Or, more accurately, it cost me a pretty penny.
First, I got a speeding ticket and waited too long to call about it (Because I was busy, yo! I need more than 15 days to deal with shit like that. What's the hurry Plano Police Department??). Anyway, the speeding and the not responding combined was enough to put a rather sizable dent in the old bank account. On top of that, I wracked up insane amounts of library fees (as is my M.O. and an annual end of the school year frustration).
Today I decided to face reality and pay some fees and fines like a responsible adult. What happened? I left the library and found a parking ticket on my car. Now, I have used this parking lot for over 3 years and NEVER gotten a ticket. But today, on my day-of-fines-and-fees-reckoning, I got a giant yellow ticket. Seems they changed the rules on me. Stupid big shiny new white sign explaining this switcheroo, why did I not see you even though you were, actually, big, shiny, white, and right in front of my face?
Insult, consider yourself added to my injury.
In conclusion, I'm still a big fan of breaking rules.** I will probably eat ice cream 3-4 times a week (Texas is too hot. There's no way around it). I will also probably download the new Grizzly Bear album on iTunes today (even though it is streaming free on their myspace page), and I will never...ever...stop using ellipses....
**Please note this personal policy no longer applies to rules for which the consequence of breaking said rules involves inordinate fines and fees.
You get the point.
Probably the only thing I enjoy more than making rules is breaking them. One of my biggest rules is, in fact, that all of my rules are meant to be broken at least on occasion. Afterall, according to one of my favorite clichés, rules were made for that distinct purpose.
This month my trusty always-break-the-rules rule bit me in the proverbial ass. Or, more accurately, it cost me a pretty penny.
First, I got a speeding ticket and waited too long to call about it (Because I was busy, yo! I need more than 15 days to deal with shit like that. What's the hurry Plano Police Department??). Anyway, the speeding and the not responding combined was enough to put a rather sizable dent in the old bank account. On top of that, I wracked up insane amounts of library fees (as is my M.O. and an annual end of the school year frustration).
Today I decided to face reality and pay some fees and fines like a responsible adult. What happened? I left the library and found a parking ticket on my car. Now, I have used this parking lot for over 3 years and NEVER gotten a ticket. But today, on my day-of-fines-and-fees-reckoning, I got a giant yellow ticket. Seems they changed the rules on me. Stupid big shiny new white sign explaining this switcheroo, why did I not see you even though you were, actually, big, shiny, white, and right in front of my face?
Insult, consider yourself added to my injury.
In conclusion, I'm still a big fan of breaking rules.** I will probably eat ice cream 3-4 times a week (Texas is too hot. There's no way around it). I will also probably download the new Grizzly Bear album on iTunes today (even though it is streaming free on their myspace page), and I will never...ever...stop using ellipses....
**Please note this personal policy no longer applies to rules for which the consequence of breaking said rules involves inordinate fines and fees.
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