orchestra21

Tuba Thefts Plague California Schools

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:36:00 -0600

‘Strictly a tuba raid.’

"That’s how you should do it, orchestras!"

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:34:00 -0600

“That’s how you should do it, orchestras!”

- Composer and pianist Timo Andres, reporting on his experience with the WCFSO last week. We are of course happy to oblige – not to mention proud to demonstrate once again that a regional orchestra can indeed illuminate the way forward for its larger, copiously-funded metropolitan brethren.

J Dilla - Nag Champa Orchestral Mix from Like Water For...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:51:56 -0600

J Dilla - Nag Champa Orchestral Mix
from Like Water For Chocolate - 2000
and Suite for Ma Dukes - 2009

This week sees the anniversaries of James Yancey’s birth and death [he would have been 38 today]. My annual birthday gift to Dilla is spreading his music – in February 2010 I introduced his work to orchestra audiences in Iowa, but in the absence of as grand a tribute this year I instead have two wrapped CD copies of Suite for Ma Dukes to give away, courtesy Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Mochilla. Drop me a line with a note about what Dilla’s music means to you or like/reblog this post and I’ll randomly select two recipients.

[My mix via The Beats was originally done for this]

Monk Monday [Image by Lawrence Shustak]

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:14:55 -0600

Monk Monday

[Image by Lawrence Shustak]

What was the encore piece that Tim A played last night?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:52:00 -0600

Timo Andres followed up his re-invention of Mozart K537 on Saturday with an arrangement of Mahler’s Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. I thought it was a fabulous choice and, like everything Timo does, beautifully executed.

Anyone who has been following the WCFSO for the past several years may recall experiencing some of the same music on our stage [or on Iowa Public TV] in the alternate version Mahler conceived for the third movement of his Second Symphony.

In 1851 Robert Schumann completed an extensive revision of his D...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:55:00 -0600

In 1851 Robert Schumann completed an extensive revision of his D minor symphony for performance and publication. Despite the composer’s own well-considered adjustments his first version of Op 120 from ten years earlier was preferred by Johannes Brahms, who subsequently published it over Clara Schumann’s objections. Conductors and composers, finding justification in these early aesthetic disagreements surrounding the symphony’s orchestration, have since made it common practice to re-revise Schumann’s own final version of the piece – most notably Gustav Mahler, whose retouching of a famous passage from the symphony for his own performances is above.

Tonight at the WCFSO we’ll leave the revisions and recompositions to Timo Andres and instead try to communicate the soundscape that Schumann himself intended for his Fourth Symphony.

Iowa: Are you ready for the new normal? Discover it tomorrow...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:15:06 -0600

Iowa: Are you ready for the new normal?

Discover it tomorrow when Timo Andres joins us at WCFSO to present his unique version of Mozart’s twenty-sixth piano concerto, in which soloist and composer are rejoined just as they were when Mozart first played the piece in 1789.

[Read more about Andres’ approach and see his performance of the work here]

"The architecture of the copyright law that is now being forced upon the Internet was crafted for a..."

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:42:22 -0600

“The architecture of the copyright law that is now being forced upon the Internet was crafted for a different age and different technology. A strategy for rewarding artists that regulates ‘copies’ makes as much sense in the digital age as a strategy for controlling greenhouse gases that regulates breathing. The modern law of copyright is a failure, not because copyright is a failure, but because in the current technological environment, the machine that we are using to protect the values of copyright is a failure.”

- I agree with just about everything Lawrence Lessig says, especially on this topic.

Mozart performed his twenty-sixth piano concerto twice in...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:58:00 -0600

Mozart performed his twenty-sixth piano concerto twice in 1789-90 and as was his custom [especially in piano works conceived for himself] he improvised extensively, particularly in the left hand. Now composer and pianist Timo Andres inherits Mozart’s mantle, but with a twenty-first century twist. As Timo explains his re-imagining of K537 fills in the many incomplete sections of Mozart’s manuscript with entirely contemporary material:

I approached the piece not from a scholarly or editorial perspective, but more as a sprawling playground for pianistic invention and virtuosity, taking cues from the composer-pianist tradition Mozart helped to crystallize. The left hand gets an extended catalogue of gestures [no more tasteful, 18th-century Alberti bass]. It uses imitation, counter-melodies, and canonic interplay to participate in the musical drama of the right hand [sometimes even leaping above it in register]. Harmonically, new chords both thicken and undermine the existing progressions, adding allusions to music after Mozart’s time [Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Prokofiev, Ives, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Bartók all make appearances].

At the end of last year Andres and his colleagues from the impressive Metropolis Ensemble performed K537 at Angel Orensanz Center in NYC as an encore to their 2010 premiere of the work; the first movement from that reading is above. Timo arrives in Iowa today to begin rehearsals of the piece with the WCFSO ahead of our collaboration on Saturday night.

[Other movements from the Metropolis performance are here]

Tsuneaki Hiramatsu’s stunning long exposures of fireflies...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:07:47 -0600

Tsuneaki Hiramatsu’s stunning long exposures of fireflies at dusk. I’m longing for midwest summer.

[via The Fox Is Black]

The dramatic interior of Buenos Aires’ El Ateneo...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:15:29 -0600

The dramatic interior of Buenos Aires’ El Ateneo bookstore, housed in the former Teatro Gran Splendid. The image is by one of my favorite urban documentarians, Tumblr’s own Patrick Joust.

[More interesting stage views here]

"Downloaders are making a moral calculation and coming to the conclusion that the content industry..."

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:11:00 -0600

“Downloaders are making a moral calculation and coming to the conclusion that the content industry immorally perpetuates an artificial scarcity to maximize their profits at the expense of users and artists. They understand that content is a non-rival good, that unlike an apple, they can consume it without diminishing anyone else’s ability to consume the same thing. They know that the content owner paid nothing to reproduce or distribute the content on the Internet. They also know that the artists who created the original content get a tiny fraction of the revenue. So they are making a moral judgement that the content owners are pricing their product to extract unjustifiable profits and they feel morally justified taking the content they find out there on the web.”

- Brad Burnham’s astute take on digital media was originally intended as an entry into the SOPA debate but is now even more relevant in the wake of the Megaupload shutdown.

I’ve never been shy about extolling the widespread benefits [for everyone but a narrow group of rights holders] associated with the internet-era erosion of monetary value for recorded media. Not only does this process naturally encourage greater focus on live performance – something all musicians should actively seek – but it is also a boon for artists and audiences in general, who benefit from freer contact and conversation with art of our time.

The saddest part of this situation is how willfully the major media companies continue to resist the prevalent new financial and aesthetic calculus surrounding the value of recorded media, all out of a desperate – and doomed – attempt to perpetuate a previous century’s exploitative business model.

BALLET 360, featuring dancers from Canada’s National Ballet...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:45:00 -0600

BALLET 360, featuring dancers from Canada’s National Ballet School, is one installment in a fascinating series by Ryan Enn Hughes:

‘The 360 Project’ is an exploration into the crossroads of photography and motion pictures. It is a study of peak dance movements, captured simultaneously by 48 cameras aligned in a circle.

Prepare to be spellbound.

[via culturite]

Beautiful, cold midwinter riding here in Iowa – I have the...

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:55:17 -0600

Beautiful, cold midwinter riding here in Iowa – I have the county roads completely to myself when the temps drop.

Kickstarter: Recording of Four Symphonic Works by Jerome N. Margolis

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:39:00 -0600

Kickstarter: Recording of Four Symphonic Works by Jerome N. Margolis:

Jerry was the orchestra director at my high school in California and one of the coolest teachers I’ve ever had. Now that he is retired and happily free of the mania we upstart musicians brought upon him he’s getting around to recording several of his symphonic works.

One of the pieces slated for taping, American Journey, was among the first things I ever conducted and offered me a formative experience in preparing a contemporary score alongside its composer. As a result I have insider knowledge of just how much this project could use your support – that early performance commenced with the orchestra falling apart and most definitely did not leave Jerry with much of a reference recording!

[Ancillary lessons: Successful conducting careers can emerge from inauspicious beginnings, and composers – especially if they are your mentors – may be willing to talk to you even after you butcher their work onstage.]

GPOYW Seeing the world [and its four-legged inhabitants] through...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:42:00 -0600

GPOYW Seeing the world [and its four-legged inhabitants] through his eyes EDITION

If you haven’t already grabbed Big Beautiful Dark and...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:32:56 -0600

If you haven’t already grabbed Big Beautiful Dark and Scary from Bang on a Can’s 25th anniversary website not to worry – it is still available for free download. Absolutely worth it for the fun listening, if not to add to the wonderful commentary stream occasioned by the album’s offering. So far the highlight for me is new work from Dirty Projectors music director [and fellow Yale grad] David Longstreth – three tight, beat-driven tunes including this head nodder, Instructional Video.

"Prizes are for boys, and I’m all grown up."

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:56:21 -0600

“Prizes are for boys, and I’m all grown up.”

- Real talk from Charles Ives, parting with the Pulitzer Prize money he was awarded for the Third Symphony in 1947; half went to Lou Harrison, who had only recently conducted the premiere of the piece. The fact that Ives could afford the bravado hardly diminishes his trademark badassery.

[via wwnorton]

Orchestrollercoaster

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:34:55 -0600

I shared this on Twitter and Facebook a few weeks ago and got a nice response. At the time I wasn’t aware that the version I linked to [and others elsewhere] had been cropped. So here it is again in the original wide aspect – a delightful and dizzying meeting of music and motion:

The music is from the 4th movement of Ferdinand Ries’ Second Symphony, and was animated for the Zurich Chamber Orchestra by virtual republic.

[Update: The video’s designers have recently posted the video to Vimeo as well]

The next SOPA

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:12:00 -0600

The next SOPA:

I fear Marco Arment may be right about SOPA and its ilk. I know he’s right about the big studios and the MPAA.