March 2010
18 posts
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Cool Hand Lennie →
John Adams: ‘I have been thinking a lot about Leonard Bernstein lately.’
Click.
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Get Timeless
Last month I participated in a unique presentation of Suite for Ma Dukes, Miguel-Agtwood Ferguson’s amazing orchestral reinventions of music by J Dilla. Today the piece’s original 2009 performance is released on DVD along with two other concerts featuring Brazilian legend Arthur Verocai and Ethiopian jazz great Mulatu Astatke. The Timeless shows were organized and filmed by LA-based...
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Inside Mahler
My 2009 performance of Mahler 5 with the WCFSO will air this evening at 8pm EST on Iowa Public Radio [link is an mp3 stream]. We took a unique approach to presenting the piece, mixing multimedia with live music and offering insights from orchestra members into the experience of playing Mahler. The image above is one of several views of the event by WCFSO photographer Noah Henscheid. [You may...
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Attention through exposure
My sense is that orchestra professionals don’t read Rob Giampietro. Maybe they should [parentheses mine]:
Today, it doesn’t matter if a work’s been produced, it matters if it’s been seen [heard]. Not printing [physical media], but page views [streams/downloads]. The issue is not legitimacy through production but attention through exposure.
Because:
The production of music today is...
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SoundCloud →
I use SoundCloud on this website, and because several readers inquired recently about its services I’ll take advantage of Tumblr Tuesday to recommend it. Follow SoundCloud’s blog – or better yet join up – for a thoroughly refreshing approach to digital music exchange.
And to my Tumblr followers: if you are in the mood to do some recommending please consider supporting my blog in the...
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#MM
Behind this week’s play counts: the third installment in Madlib’s one-a-month album spree, heat from the Continent, previously recommended riffs on classic styles, Brazilian virtuosi, beats from the Balkans via Brooklyn, and Dilla with orchestra [about which I’ll post more soon].
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Music box
Might not work so well for Mahler 9, but definitely a cool concept.
[Seen at Lefto.be, jb.tumblr, daily design discoveries, and elsewhere]
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Learning to love Gustav Mahler →
Good article from my hometown on Mahler’s place in concert life there, then and now.
[via symphony no. 2 in em, originally at LosAnx]
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Plains sounds
‘Whenever I have crossed the Pampa or have lived in it for a time, my spirit felt itself inundated by changing impressions, now joyful, now melancholy, some full of euphoria and others replete with a profound tranquility, produced by its limitless immensity and by the transformation that the countryside undergoes in the course of a day.’ Alberto Ginastera, on the Argentinian plains...
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Sartorial Stravinsky
Automatic reblog.
[via Nerd Boyfriend]
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Master manipulator
Guess the composer:
Now that’s what you want a musician to do: see into the future by listening to the past to remake the present.
Beethoven? Brahms? Try Madlib, aka the Beat Konducta.
The quote comes from a recent profile of the prolific beatmaker and avant-jazz explorer by Paul Morley of The Guardian. If you’re not familiar with Madlib – ‘master manipulator of...
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Now featuring ...
… featured posts! Consider these representative of my approach to blogging about orchestral music.
To make room in the navigation bar I’ve removed the random post option, but you can always try your luck by typing the word ‘random’ after my domain, like so: blog.jasonweinberger.com/random.
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New media music
It’s easy to assume that new media is a strictly 21st-century preoccupation for musicians. Experience Aaron Copland’s Prairie Journal this Saturday at the WCFSO and you may reconsider that assumption.
In 1936 Columbia Broadcasting System commissioned an unprecedented six orchestral works for broadcast on its fledgeling national radio network, including a new piece by Copland. The...
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An opinion on creativity
Kanye West, ever ready to express opinions, frees himself from their orthodoxy:
There’s no such thing as fact anymore, only opinion. The closest thing we have to fact is ‘common opinion’. Everything is an opinion. The way you dress is an expression of your opinion. Your religious beliefs are your opinion. The music you turn up loud is your opinion. For most people it’s easier to...
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'Sistema'-tic excellence
We are rehearsing Alberto Ginastera’s Estancia at the WCFSO this week, and as we work on imbuing it with as much rhythmic vitality and exuberance as possible I’ve suggested that everyone spend some time with these dynamic performances of the piece by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra. I intended to post one of them here as well, until I stumbled across this from...
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Looking forward to this
Click through the image for the table of contents to Alex Ross’ forthcoming Listen to This. I’m hoping that the second chapter, ‘Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues: Bass Lines of Music History,’ includes a consideration of hip hop. Anyone been to one of Alex’s readings of that essay?
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Wider culture
This one lit up the music writers’ blogs last week, for obvious reasons.
The New Statesman, in association with the Royal Academy of Music, is delighted to announce the launch of its Young Music Critic competition. We are looking for classical music writers under 30. If you have a passion for, and knowledge of, the canon, but are also interested in pop, jazz, politics or the wider culture,...