ANABlog

Crystal Castles

noreply@blogger.com (Johnny Chang) — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:49:00 +0000

RIP, Robert

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:07:00 +0000

Mozart in the Underground, Schubert on YouTube

noreply@blogger.com (Johnny Chang) — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:41:00 +0000

Cappuccino Brewing

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Sun, 11 May 2008 02:49:00 +0000

Now playing on Found Sounds Radio

M. Ward, "Prelude in C Major" (from the Well-Tempered Clavier)

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:20:00 +0000

M.w.

Christian Wolff, "For Piano I"

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:44:00 +0000

-- Liner Notes from Wergo 60063 --

For Piano I was written for David Tudor with a view to his virtuosity, and first performed by him in February, 1952 in New York. The structure is made of sixteen segments of varying lengths and densities (number of notes in a given length), whose sequence, superposition and recurrence are determined by chance. The choice of notes (out of a total of nine), durations (total 13) and amplitudes (9), and their disposition within a segment were made by the composer. Only segments of zero density, i.e. silence, left no choice.

These limitations allowed a special freedom to the composing: the restrictions once made, the range of choices, though still immense, became particularly clear. The question of what to do next for how long, depending so much on idiosyncratic feeling, was settled in advance. The larger continuity of the piece formed itself, and its expressive content fell in with it.

You Let the Hare Win One Time....

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:52:00 +0000

* "You can be rude about the record industry for not reacting fast enough to downloads, but the fact is that that overwhelming change happened years before it expected."

* Ian McEwan: "...it doesn’t suit novelists to be collaborators. We are so used to playing God by ourselves."

* Orchestra director in jail for claiming tax refunds on instruments he never bought.

* Albena Danailova becomes the first female concertmaster at the Vienna State Opera.

* Apparently, the only 'sanctioned' T&A at the Classical Brits were Netrebko's.

* 12-year olds are prodigies at many things, but never the trombone!

Mark Northfield, "Zero"

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:18:00 +0000

.m.n

65daysofstatic, "Dance Parties [Distant]"

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:56:00 +0000

on tour w/ The Cure now

Jean Dubuffet, "Prospère, prolifère"

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:45:00 +0000

-- Liner Notes Continued --

I am, however well aware of the gap between my intentions and the actual results. The experiments which are available in the small collection of records should be considered as outlines for a programme which, if it were to be finalized, would require a lot of improvements such as enhanced recording techniques and better use of each of the instruments. It might also be necessary to modify the instruments or make better adapted ones.

In the meantime, there is still a lot of room for experiment with what is already available. With any instrument one comes across one can get such a great variety of sound effects that it may not be worth looking for others. Instrumental technique and a thorough knowledge of how to get the most from the instruments are clearly sorely lacking; I am very aware that they would be of great use to me.

It might be, however that this would lead to the loss of the benefit of certain unexpected windfalls which can come of improvising on an instrument one doesn't really know how to use. Having said this, the tracks included on this record were not intended as finished works but as the initial experiments of someone venturing into what is for him, largely unfamiliar territory. I would very much hope that musicians accept to treat them as such.

Jean DUBUFFET, April 1961
Translation by Matthew Daillie

"Rarely heard flutist..."

noreply@blogger.com (dolf) — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:11:00 +0000

"Ninety-tine percent of flutists have never performed unaccompanied."

This Is Ivy League, "Crown of Love"

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:21:00 +0000

TIIL

Bram Stoker's 'Die Fledermaus'

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:24:00 +0000

* Franz Welser-Moest wants no part of a vampire-tinged production of Strauss' operetta.

* "Perhaps bowing should be a part of the training when studying."

* "Beethoven, As I Knew Him: A True Story" premieres this month.

* "...among the very few composers who can reliably sustain an entire concert programme, the greatest has to be Bach."

* Ward Stare named resident conductor in Saint Louis.

* How the Chinese media covered the papal concert.

* RIP, Frances Yeend.

* Warner Music's sales rose 2%, but its stock dropped 29%.

Says Who?

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:49:00 +0000

* "Edwardian musical comedy has not aged well."

* Helmuth Rilling doesn't know how many times he's recorded the B Minor Mass.

* Gergiev: "I don't conduct more than five to six orchestras a year, which is a very small number, I believe there are conductors who conduct 30 or 40."

* Berg invented hip-hopera, y'all.

* A children's opera performed by children.

* Nathan Gunn shills for MET in HD on the Colbert Report:

Will 'Out-Of-Print' Go Out Of Style?

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:03:00 +0000

* Amazon's CreateSpace offers print on demand of old titles.

* "the BBC banned "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans", because it was actually a bit beastly to the Germans."

* "The performing practices of the 20th century have actually destroyed a lot of the good things of the old style."

* The symphony as a symbol of Germany.

* MET screenings sell out down under.

* Warwick Thompson sees the influx of cinema directors as bad for opera.

Jean Dubuffet, "Terre foisonnante"

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:42:00 +0000

-- Liner Notes Continued --

The first tape produced in these circumstances is rather unusual as it is a poem, La fleur de barbe, which is declaimed, chanted and vaguely sung by several voices mixed together (which are all in fact mine) with occasional instrumental accompaniment. The subsequent recordings are the result of two diverging approaches which I hesitated between and which are probably both apparent in at least some pieces. The first was an attempt to produce music with, a very human touch, in other words, which expressed people's moods and their drives as well as the sounds, the general hubbub and the sonorous backdrop of our everyday lives, the noises to which we are so closely connected and, although we don't realize it, have probably endeared themselves to us and which we would be hard put to do without. There is an osmosis between this permanent music which carries us along and the music we ourselves express; they go together to form the specific music which can be considered as a human beings. Deep down I like to think of this music as music we make, in contrast to another very different music, which greatly stimulates my thoughts and which I call music we listen to. The latter is completely foreign to us and our natural tendencies; it is not human at all and could lead us to hear (or imagine) sounds which would be produced by the elements themselves, independent of human intervention. They would be as strange as what we might hear if we were to put our ear to some opening leading to a world other than our own or if we were to suddenly develop a new form of hearing with which we would become aware of a strange tumult that our senses had been unable to pick up and which might come from elements which were supposedly involved in silent action, such as humus decomposing, grass growing or minerals undergoing transformation. I should point out that in both these categories of music and even when I blend them into one and the same (never mind if this seems illogical), there is a clear preference for very composite sounds which appear to be formed by a great number of voices calling to mind distant murmurs, communities, hustle and bustle and hives of activity. I also have a preference for music without variations, not structured according to a particular system but unchanging, almost formless, as though the pieces had no beginning and no end but were simply extracts taken haphazardly from a ceaseless and ever-flowing score. I must admit that I find this idea very pleasing.

Barenboim's Baton Passes To Muti

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:40:00 +0000

* A couple of hours ago, the Tribune reported that the CSO was holding its cards close to the vest, but the announcement just came out that they have in fact hired Ricardo Muti.

* Mozart gets his Saudi Arabian debut in a truly revolutionary concert.

* Dominic Muldowney's new piece isn't crossover.

* Nathaniel Stookey: "every composer you can think of is dead."

* Congratulations to John McDonald, Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year.

* Rachel Portman's The Little Prince premiered on the West Coast this weekend.

* Kirke Mechem’s opera about John Brown premiered this weekend, too.

* San Diegoans (San Diegans?) get their choice of 5 operas next year: Don Quixote, Peter Grimes, Tosca, Rigoletto, and Madame Butterfly.

Jean Dubuffet, "Longue peine"

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Sun, 04 May 2008 20:33:00 +0000

-- Liner Notes Continued --

As for the tape recorder, I was a complete novice. It was only later on that I was to realise that my recordings, done on amateur equipment, left a lot to be desired compared to those carried out by professionals. Strangely enough, however I am not convinced that the latter are really superior. Similarly, I often prefer photographs taken by poorly equipped amateurs than those of specialists. In my subsequent dealings with technicians, I felt that the downside to certain benefits of the care they took in setting-up their equipment, was an inhibiting effect; even if the resulting recordings were very clear and free of flaws and hiccups, they weren't necessarily any more evocative. I believe that all spheres of the arts could benefit from using simpler techniques. I also believe in getting down to basics, I am all for rugged and unaffected charms rather than frills and furbelows. There is another more important reason for my attitude. We consider that a good recording provides precise and distinct sound which seems to be coming from a close source; in our daily lives, however our hearing is submitted to all sorts of other sounds which, more often than not, are unclear muddled, far from pure, distant and only partially audible. To ignore them is to give birth to a specious artform, exclusively concerned with a single category of sounds which, when it comes down to it, are pretty uncommon in everyday life. I was aiming to produce music based not on a selection of sounds but on sounds that can be heard anywhere on any day and especially those that one hears without really being aware of them. My rudimentary equipment was better suited to this than the most sophisticated machines. Having decided to collect and use whatever kinds of sounds I came across, the sometimes unexpected sounds which in I, tape recorder played back to me were at least as interesting (and sometimes more so) than those I had actually intended to record. When the surprises were in my opinion uninteresting, I rubbed them off, but sometimes they were incredibly good. I transformed a room in my house into a music workshop and in the periods between our get-togethers with Asger Jorn I became a one-man band, playing each of my fifty-odd instruments in turn. Thanks to my tape recorder I was able to play each part successively on the same tape and have the machine play everything back simultaneously. I went about it step by step, recording over the bad sections and using scissors and sticky tape to cut, join and put everything together Such a method entails a lot of trial and error: as it was impossible to hear what I had already recorded when playing a new part, it was very tricky to synchronize them and, struggling to get exactly what I wanted, I had to start over and over again. Nevertheless, the fact that it was so difficult to keep things under control and that I had to trust to luck meant that the risks of failure were offset by the possibility of unexpected surprises. I later added a second tape recorder which enabled me to transfer material from one machine to the other, to play whilst listening to what had already been recorded and to make as many changes as I liked without spoiling the initial recording when the new elements proved disappointing.

noreply@blogger.com (Johnny Chang) — Sat, 03 May 2008 20:35:00 +0000

NY Times

LA Times

Son Lux, "Break"

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:42:00 +0000

s.l.

"Toed the party line today..."

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:21:00 +0000

* Volume 2 of Prokofiev's diaries is out.

* Corigliano: "I'm always dazzled by percussion concertos, but afterwards I can't remember a single thing about them except that they were exciting and had lots and lots of notes."

* Vivaldi's Argippo gets its second production in three centuries.

* BBC's Young Musician contest turns 30.

* MSN's Music Store died a well-deserved death. Now, the EFF is pissing on the corpse.

Setting Aside One Bit of Genius For Another

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:27:00 +0000

The brilliance of Met Titles is that it's up to the listener whether she wants to turn them on or not. They aren't looming above the stage, distracting you from the action, and for the most part, you can't see your neighbor's. For all you know, he could have his titles off as he sits through his 100th viewing of an opera he knows by heart.

It is a brilliant solution to an age-old hurdle for opera goers. Why on Earth the MET allowed Phelim McDermott to shut them off for Satyagraha is, and apparently shall remain, a mystery.

McDermott's argument is (in a nutshell), "The words aren't important". His view is that the opera is a meditation on the libretto by Constance DeJong, almost in the way one might meditate on a Psalm. Fair enough, but how is that different than any opera?

All you need is a decent actor with a good bass to convey the loss Colline suffers when he pawns his overcoat. No one at a halfway decent performance of La Bohème really needs a word-for-word translation of "Vecchia Zimarra" to catch on to what's happening in that moment.

DeJong's libretto is far from entirely poetical. It relies heavily on scenario and rather protracted speeches (again, the same way any libretto does).

Our chief objection to the abandonment of the titles isn't that it made the opera hard to follow, but that it severely delimited the possible experiences of it. Instead of the listener choosing what to read for himself, we are left with McDermott's choices, as he projects certain words on the back wall of the stage.

For the first 10 minutes, there's bupkis up there, and then all of the sudden, a couple of sentences show up. So, there's an immediate, forced shift to reading mode, and then back to contemplation when they disappear. As the opera progresses, you start to wonder how McDermott is choosing which fragments of the text to project, and it all adds up to an enormous distraction. Just leave the Met Titles on and be done with it! We guarantee it would give folks like this a better time.

McDermott's emphasis is puzzling in more ways than just this business with the libretto, though. Gandhi's intellectual cousins hover over the scene in cutouts on the back wall. First, it's Tolstoy scribbling away at a desk. Then it's Tagore, and finally, a very Obama-looking MLK. But this poor schmo has to climb a ladder and stand on a pedestal in the middle of the stage for the better part of a half hour, waving his arm in the air in vaguely Hitlerian gestures (MLK never waved like that).

All of the eloquence of the Tolstoy/Tagore references evaporates when Gandhi embraces the base of the podium. McDermott is slathering on a virtual baton passing which, again, becomes obnoxious in the way it pulls focus.

For the most part, the pantomime works brilliantly, but as with everything in this production, the balance is way off. The most arresting image on the MET stage this decade is the entrance of the puppets in the second act. It is a heart stopping moment, but as soon as they walk onstage and loom over Gandhi, they are gone.

However, the rather cute, but trivial, idea of lacing the stage with packing tape goes on for a solid 10 minutes. Once the gag reaches its limit, the tape is gathered up into a vague stick figure, balled up and then flown offstage. Whatever for? It might have worked if the flying offstage bit hadn't shown up already in an earlier scene.

And for Vishnu's sake, don't get us started on all the slow motion movement!

Though the whole Satyagraha experience is frustrating enough to warrant a few hundred words worth of griping, none of this impacts the bottom line, which is that it is an extraordinary evening. Tonight is the last performance in this run, and with any luck it will come back many, many times.

Ogling Orff

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:55:00 +0000

* O₂ is hip to the fact that the only way to make Carmina Burana interesting is to throw naked girls, bungee cords, and fireworks at the thing.

* Stephen Paulus is 'one of the few composers who lives entirely from writing commissioned music'.

* Apparently, Handel had quite the pimp hand.

* Rattle is doing Stockhausen in an aircraft hangar, and Berlin is beset by bickering.

* RIP, Marios Tokas.

* China Philharmonic to play for Pope Benedict.

* Congratulations to Joel Smirnoff, the next head of CIM.

* Parking is more important than most producers realize.

* Kristjan Jarvi: "The only reason I believe that classical music concerts have become stale is that...freedom and ingenuity is lacking."

* Someone found Roger Waters' pig.

* Clear Channel dives into social networking.

Hans Tutschku

noreply@blogger.com (Johnny Chang) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:46:00 +0000

Born 1966 in Weimar. Member of the "Ensemble for intuitive music Weimar" since 1982. He studied composition of electronic music at the college of music Dresde and had since 1989 the opportunity to participate in several concert cycles of Karlheinz Stockhausen to learn the art of the sound direction. He further studied 1991/92 Sonology and electroacoustic composition at the royal conservatoire in the Hague (Holland).

1994 followed a one year’s study stay at IRCAM in Paris. He taught 1995/96 as a guest professor electroacoustic composition in Weimar. 1996 he participated in composition workshops with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough. 1997-2001 he taught electroacoustic composition at IRCAM in Paris and from 2001 to 2004 at the conservatory of Montbéliard.
In May 2003 he completed a doctorate (PhD) with Professor Dr. Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham. During the spring term 2003 he was the "Edgar Varèse Gast Professor" at the TU Berlin.

Since September 2004 Hans Tutschku has been working as composition professor and director of the electroacoustic studios at Harvard University (Boston). He is the winner of many international composition competitions, among other: Bourges, CIMESP Sao Paulo, Hanns Eisler price, Prix Ars Electronica, Prix Noroit and Prix Musica Nova. In 2005 he rezeived the culture prize of the city of Weimar.click here

[Tutschku has a number of recordings posted on his website, www.Tutschku.com. I especially enjoy Winternacht for piano, percussiona nd live electronics.]

Underground Mozart

noreply@blogger.com (jodru) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:57:00 +0000

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