January 2010
16 posts
2 tags
Orchestrock
Who says orchestras don’t rock?
Tomorrow night I’ll lead the latest installment of the Louisville Orchestra’s most intriguing concert series, Strings Attached. Featured are two great bands, Calexico and The Airborne Toxic Event. Needless to say, I’m stoked to participate in yet another cross-genre concert and to collaborate with open-minded musicians from other...
2 tags
How about enriched listening?
LA TImes Go Mobile quotes BACH Technology Chief Executive Stefan Kohlmeyer explaining the company’s MusicDNA project:
What we are bringing back to the end user is the entire emotional experience of music… We think it got lost in the transition to the digital era. We think a beautiful piece of audio has been reduced to a number code. We want to enrich it again.
And how? Replacing the...
1 tag
Inside the orchestra
The Berlin Phil takes us inside the orchestra … way inside.
Yet another of this ensemble’s many creative approaches to engaging people in concert music. [via @LaceyH]
5 tags
551 for 254
On the occasion of Mozart’s 254th birthday, the buoyant dance movement of his last and most exuberant symphony:
Mozart – Symphony K551, Menuetto-Trio WCFSO – November 2007
More Mozart from this blog here.
1 tag
Mass-communication
From designer Frank Chimero comes this bit of wisdom:
‘The digital revolution allows us to do mass-communication without mass-production.’
Reblogged here for its relevance to orchestras, who so often struggle with communicating the uniqueness of their product.
4 tags
J Dilla estate, foundation, website →
Just in time for the first symphonic performances of his music.
4 tags
Fugue-ality
A page from Johann Sebastian Bach’s manuscript of the sinfonia from Cantata BWV 75. The movement’s four-part instrumental fugue crowned with a soaring chorale melody is nearly singular within Bach’s entire corpus of ensemble music. [Image via the fabulous Bach Digital project]
If you’re in Iowa hear it performed tonight alongside a selection of instrumental pieces...
4 tags
Play with abandon
An engaging look inside the ensemble process, at rehearsals of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto held in the same room where it was performed by the composer himself:
Previous Bach interpretations by the artistic director here, John Eliot Gardiner, have exerted a major influence on my ears over the past 15 years [particularly the vivid cantata pilgrimage concert recordings mentioned in...
3 tags
The [de]merits of easily shared
Someone tell me why so many institutions in this business - including many in my corner of it - still insist on acting this way. [Please don’t say ‘money.’]
Four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist’s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and...
1 tag
TRIN FTW
NYC design firm Front Studio rethinks a book cafe, their slick pics of the space get a ton of exposure on visuals blogs, and classical music interlopes in the form of Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise. Win!
2 tags
Recorded music = whale blubber
Electronic pop music pioneer Brian Eno believes recorded music has lost its value, and he’s probably right:
I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run...
2 tags
Strange and complex
I just discovered designer Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, and several of its entries resonated strongly with me for the ways they echo my change-oriented approach to the ‘strange and complex’ world of symphonic orchestras:
Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live...
3 tags
Schoenberg-Thalberg: The truth revealed? →
From my hometown – at the intersection of Modernism and Hollywood – comes ‘a minor footnote to the annals of Schoenbergiana’ courtesy The Rest Is Noise.
2 tags
Seeing Schoenberg seeing
Much of my week has been spent peering into the moonlit musical night of Verklärte Nacht. Here its composer peers back:
Arnold Schoenberg – Self-Portrait, ca. 1910
2 tags
Curation Culture
Frank Chimero: It’s a wonderful time to be a maker because there are so many ways for people to appreciate your work.
3 tags
Manuscriptone
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 5
Autograph manuscript of the full score, 1903 [via symphonyno2ineminor]
This page as your ringtone? You’re welcome.