orchestra21

Sartorial Stravinsky

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:54:00 -0600

Automatic reblog.

via Nerd Boyfriend

Master manipulator

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:50:00 -0600

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 history’ and one of the most essential young musicians in the world today – Stones Throw will take care of that for you.

Update: ST just offered up a few tracks from Madlib’s forthcoming Beat Konducta in Africa release.

Now featuring ...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:30:00 -0600

… 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.

Concert → Music of the Americas → Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:09:12 -0600

Concert → Music of the Americas → Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony:

Vernacular-inspired music from North and South America – get ready for some serious rhythm.

New media music

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:31:00 -0600

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 composer, already writing in a variety of media and soon to embrace film, approached his first radio commission with an uncanny sensitivity to the amplifying power that so often accompanies the development of new media forms.

Enthusiastic about the ‘exciting new medium,’ Copland recognized that ‘the very idea of reaching so many people with a single performance’ would reward a specific type of music – ’profound in content, simple in expression and understandable to all.’

It is also worth noting that the original presentation of Prairie Journal featured a quintessential new media marketing ruse – the crowdsourced contest. The piece’s first subtitle, Saga of the Prairie, was chosen from hundreds submitted by listeners.

Manuscript via the Library of Congress Aaron Copland Collection. Top image shows Andre Kostelanetz with the CBS Radio Orchestra in 1930; Howard Barlow conducted the premiere of Copland’s piece in 1937. Quotes from Howard Pollack’s biography of the composer.

An opinion on creativity

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:18:00 -0600

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 just agree. For me the hardest thing is to ‘just’ agree and that is what sparks creativity, the feeling that something can be better, the feeling that something’s missing. The feeling that something’s needed.

[Seen first at Put This On, and again at Frank Chimero has a blog.]

'Sistema'-tic excellence

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:18:00 -0600

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 another of Venezuela’s El Sistema youth orchestras:

Bravo to TED for highlighting the Teresa Carreños, and to The Rambler for the link – whoa is right!

Looking forward to this

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:44:49 -0600

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?

Wider culture

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:20:39 -0600

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, and if your love of music is equal to your love of the written word, submit your work to our distinguished panel of judges.

What I notice is the stark contrast between this endeavor’s encouragement of broad-minded and culturally relevant work in music writing and the almost complete lack thereof in standard conservatory curricula and competition guidelines for performers. [Found here on Tumblr via Yay, it’s Rob]

GPOYW

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:47:00 -0600

Yet another spot on the webs edition

Concert → Reading into Music → Louisville Orchestra

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:58:00 -0600

Concert → Reading into Music → Louisville Orchestra:

Follow the link for an in-depth look at the LO’s MakingMusic program for elementary school students.

Stop selling scarcity

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:50:00 -0600

Orchestra professionals, pay close attention to these words from Jeff Jarvis:

The real story in nonphysical goods is one of deflation. Value in once-scarce — well, once-controlled — commodities like news, information, and advertising decline as the internet explodes creation and competition. The internet also destroys the ability of many to control distribution and thus value. But at the same time, the internet drastically increases efficiency thanks to platforms and open distribution and the ability — no, the need — to specialize and collaborate.

This is why the old controllers of scarcity have such trouble rethinking and remaking themselves for the economy of abundance. Their reflex is to control more, when that only decreases value.

So stop selling scarcity. Scarcity has no value.

As Jarvis points out the theory holds true for performers, many of whom are finally beginning to understand that ‘putting our content and information out there is how it gets distributed, how we find new people, how we build new relationships, how we realize new value.’ [via Frank Chimero has a blog.]

Has the Waterloo Cedar Falls Symphony played Holst's The Planets recently?

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:01:00 -0600

Funny you should ask, since our most recent event was the second in a series of amazing collaborations that began with our presentation of the Planets two seasons ago. These concerts have been insanely well-received and, based on the feedback, we are looking into the possibility of bringing back the Planets production for an encore live performance with an accompanying video release.

So, the programmer in me wants to know – would you come to a concert like this?

Genadi. Gary. Gershwin.

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:53:00 -0600

My good friend Genadi Zagor joined us at the WCFSO a few weeks ago for a scintillating rendition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, presented alongside a suite of indelible images created for the occasion by Gary Kelley. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at our rehearsal and performance, from photographer Noah Henscheid. [View the set on Flickr.]

Hope springs atonal

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:31:00 -0600

And speaking of emerging musicians doing things differently, violist Nadia Sirota fits the bill better than most. Nadia is a superb player, committed genre-buster, and, I am honored to say, former orchestra student of mine at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Get to know her on Q2 internet radio; I especially like the concept behind her new segment on post-tonal music, Hope Springs Atonal.

I think we're doing similar things. check www.joeduddell.co.uk or joeduddell.tumblr.com

Cheers

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:11:00 -0600

Indeed, it appears we are! Thanks for touching base.

For all the followers, check out Joe at the links above. Further proof that classically-trained no longer implies classically-minded.

A recent arrival on the Tumblr arts and letters scene,...

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:46:00 -0600

A recent arrival on the Tumblr arts and letters scene, Letterheady today brings us this banger of a brand statement from 19th-century musical Vienna.

Letterheady: From 1892, a spectacularly enormous letterhead belonging to Walcker Orgelbau; a German company who have been building spectacularly enormous pipe organs since 1820.
E. F. Walcker & Cie, 1892 | Source

Metropolitan madness

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:42:00 -0600

The A-Train
Gary Kelley, 2009

George Gershwin claimed that he conceived the ‘metropolitan madness’ of Rhapsody in Blue ‘on a train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang.’ That same raw rhythmic inspiration was at the heart of our recent period-orchestra rendition at the WCFSO with pianist Genadi Zagor. The image by Gary Kelley is one of a series commissioned for this concert and shown in a narrative video piece alongside the performance.

Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue with Genadi Zagor
Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, February 6, 2010

Click the arrow on the right side of the audio player to download. If you are reading this somewhere other than my site, here’s the permalink for audio and commenting.

Link → Concertgebouw: 10 free downloads

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:30:00 -0600

Link → Concertgebouw: 10 free downloads:

Sample the work of one of the world’s finest orchestras for the cost of your email address. Found via i hate music!

128 Soloists

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:01:27 -0600

And via said blog: Most orchestras can’t manage one cool picture, and these guys just rolled out more than a hundred.

True. More recent coolness from the Berliners here and here.