i guess summer is coming soon
been looking forward to trying out this mashup puzzle music game which features the music of philip glass, moby, orbital (and others)
The music element is rather clever, with new sounds played each time the beat line passes through a shape or quad. Height determines pitch, horizontal placement effects timing and the size of your quad adds a different instrumental or vocal element. This is similar to Lumines! but rather than playing one sound effect you feel like you are actually in control of building up the song. However, if you make a quad but leave part of a shape un-flattened, the outstanding block will lose life each time the beat line sweeps over it. If you fail to flatten any outstanding shapes before a block dies than you lose your multiplier and all stray shapes vanish. If you are quick enough, you can delay this effect and keep your multiplier ticking over to ridiculous heights, but juggling flattening quads over the whole board and keeping blocks alive makes for quite a hectic experience.
now i just have to find the time to get my game on. i guess summer is coming soon. sigh…
via acegamers.com
Koyaanisqatsi 1, Hollywood Bowl 0
since i’m not a real critic i’ll just post my observations about philip glass‘s concert at the hollywood bowl from last night. but there are a few qualifications i have to get out of the way first.
the bowl is one of my favorite venues to see a show, but i have always avoided going to the ‘classical’ nights b/c i’m not so excited about seeing a pickup orchestra (or what amounts to the 3rd string of the LA Phil), but when i heard that they were going to perform Koyannsqatsi i was pretty intrigued how they program other music around it. i don’t go to enough symphony concerts to know if this is common but they played a pretty short first half (25 min? maybe) ofthe ‘lighter fair’ (selections of PG’s movie and opera music) on the first half and a pretty complete (i think the consensus is there might have been a few small cuts) 90 minute version of Koyaanisqatsi on the 2nd half.
1st half (PG Ensemble)
Opening (PG piano solo), Facades, Spaceship from Einstein on the Beach
- PG isn’t a great piano player, but his musicianship comes through. i think its what yoda would sound like if he played piano (in a good way!)
- the sound wasn’t that great (keyboards vs. woodwinds). it took much too long for the sound engineer to ‘dial it in’. and reinforced my assumption that he/she didn’t give a shit and had an agenda. i also assume a monitor or two was out on the stage because the saxes were having intonation problems and from my experience the worst thing in the world is to be playing a big venue through a PA and you can’t hear yourself in the monitors.
- using a cut down group has lots of orchestration limitations. off the top of my head listening to them play ‘spaceship’ is with the keyboard heavy, the eight person ensemble doesn’t really do the music justice. there are many financial limitations to touring, but i’m not really a fan of their solution. listening to the performance i had to smile thinking of my keyboard player eric hendrickson, like the PGE and SRE i have attempted to solve orchestration problems in a similar manner (which puts eric in quite a pickle attempting to play some very non-idiomatic parts). we have had many discussions on how hard and uncomfortable it makes him feel and i wish he could have heard the show because they PGE players were having similar problems. (i know its schadenfreude, but schadenfreude with much admiration) i think eric would walk away from last nights show with a new perspective and feeling pretty good about what i put him through. (eric you are the man!)
2nd half
- the PGE performed much better, most of the balance problems were fixed
- full orchestra was a waste of money. at its core Koyaanisqatsi is a piece for brass and the PGE, expanding it to full orchestra seemed like a marketing gimmick. the most engaging sections (especially during ‘the grid’ they were silent. overall they probably played 25% of the piece and when they played i don’t see that it added much the film.
- when the strings did play i think they sandbagged their parts. from my box seats the bowings didn’t look together (we was bumped our previous seats b/c of the film projection and were offered a box, yeah!)
- the brass players didn’t fare that much better. maybe they didn’t like michael reisman’s conducting (it looked pretty clear from where i was sitting) and were pitching a fit. they were consistently behind on the upbeats and many of the hemiola’s were pretty sluggish also. on the other had it could have been a monitor situation on the stage, but i was pretty disappointed how sloppy the orchestra played. on the other hand the master chorale sounded great (other than being a bit muddy on their diction the vocal counterpoint was clear and consistent)
- i think the film that was shown was mostly complete. it felt like there were some small cuts, but i couldn’t exactly place them.
- there were some new musical sections (brass fanfare opening to “the grid”)
- the simplest musical and video elements worked the best (keyboard and spinning rocket at the end)
- it was nice to see godfrey reggio come up for the curtain call, i was half expecting to see ron fricke (but after all it is hollywood and the cinematographer never gets to do that do they?)
overall
- i wonder if the orchestra was added mainly for marketing purposes?
- thought it was very intersting that the show was mostly pot free and didn’t smell it till the way out(everybody i know claims they first watched it high in their parent’s basement)
- there are still many hassles coordinating electronic and acoustic instruments in performance. you would think that in a venue like the hollywood bowl the mix wouldn’t sound like a college new music concert
- listening to the show solidified my confidence in playing with a group of musicians over time. having your music playedbby the equivalent of a touring broadway show, its hard not to miss the inherent limitations which are compounded by the pickup orchestra playing music not in their repertoire. i’m sure they sound 100x better playing the old warhorses, but concerts like this are never going to be a full and satisfying experience.
- it also makes me question why i paid $65 for a ticket to have a pickup orchestra play film music badly. and the sound engineer not dial in a performance till the 2nd half
despite all my complaints and gripes i have to say the performance of Koyaanisqatsi was amazing. the piece transcended the performance and mesmerized the crowd. unlike many concerts at the bowl the rolling of wine bottles down the aisle actually diminished as the concert progressed. initially the audience was a little goofy and distracted became engaged and drawn in as the evening went on. it was interesting that the simplest music and film was the final section ‘prophesies’ was the most effective (which was lightly scored solo keyboard and video of the Atlas-Centaur launch explosion in 1972).
for me the music/film combination that is koyaanisqatsi has stood as a high water mark of what art music and film should be and it was great to see that it could transcend and transform a venue like the hollywood bowl.
The Pulse of Minimalism: WNYC New Sounds (June 9th, 2009)
it was great to find out that my Music from Summerland was recently featured on John Schafer’s WNYC New Sounds podcast this past june
“The pulsing rhythms of minimalism, as heard in the music of English composer Michael Nyman, and fellow Brit Jeremy Peyton-Jones. Plus there’s music from trombonist/composer Paul Bailey and the “alt-classical garage band” Paul Bailey Ensemble. It’s possible that we’ll also hear from guitarist Dominic Frasca and his takeoff of music based on Philip Glass, and more.”
The Pulse of Minimalism (June 9th, 2009)
at this point i feel very awkward on how to respond to these really thoughtful comments and reviews. besides a big thanks to john and caryn at wnyc . i think there are two bigger points that are worth making (and its that its nice to get a pat on the back when you are the least expecting it)
i’m starting to realize that although i might have moved on from a piece like retrace (i wrote in 2002) its pretty powerful and touching when somebody “gets it”. especially right now when the PBE is on hiatus and it’s going to be a while before we get out and perform again. i’m really happy that the music is out there. i guess i never had really thought much about music we weren’t currently performing (out of sight, out of mind?), but over the past few months i have really gotten back a lot from my friends about what the music and PBE means to them. i had never really contemplated that how some pieces take on a life of their own and means very different things to different people. amazing
thanks steve!
when i first got to college i was literally a “hayseed from kansas” (lenexa, kansas that is) and although i liked much of the music we were studying i kept asking my theory professor and long suffering composition teacher (dr. walter mays/wichita state university) for music by composers who were “alive now”.
to his credit he started with ligeti, then moved on to martin, stockhausen, berio, lutoslowski, penderecki… they were all interesting artists but none of them really “spoke” to me. all that changed after he gave me the score to reich’s “8 lines”. listening to that piece changed my life. i then knew i had found my “home”.
to his credit even though “those minimalists, that passing fad” (not said with a sneer, but more like a disapproving uncle) were not his cup of tea, he soon introduced me to glass and riley and always respected my early aesthetic. that little “push in the right direction” was all i needed.
steve reich might have won the award for the double sextet. but encountering his music in my youth was important because it showed that great art music was possible outside of the academic, orchestral, and modernist traditions.
FTO!
Minimalist Music Theatre: WNYC New Sounds Podcast (2008)
Minimalist Music Theatre (originally aired May 20, 2008)
“Hear some music theatre pieces on this New Sounds show. Listen to Philip Glass’s recent release “Waiting for the Barbarians,” adapted from the novel by the South African writer and Nobel Prize Winner John Coetzee. Also, there’s music by Paul Bailey – his post-minimalist music theatre piece “Retrace Our Steps.” He describes it as a four act vocal/instrumental spectacle based on texts by Gertrude Stein, Guy Debord and Jenny Bitner. The “alt-classical garage band” Paul Bailey Ensemble performs the work. And more.”
minimalist jukebox part IV, minimalism is dead!
minimalism is dead! long live minimalism! i couldn’t help thinking this during the final minimalist jukebox festival concert featuring the music of john adams and philip glass. the evening started off on a high note with a very convincing concert reduction of glass’s opera akhnaten. the piece represented high minimalism at its best scored for [...]
Retrace Our Steps (2005), Background and Influences
i started assembling the librettro for retrace our steps at the end of my grad school experience sometime in spring of 03. i had never written any vocal music and was encouraged by vocalist nicole baker (who is on the faculty at csuf) to write her a piece.
background
i not really a “word” guy and have never been able to remember lyrics from any song, but writing for how the voice sounds was of course really appealing… duh.
influences
at the time i was writing retrace i was coming out of my grad school experience and had been studying major large scale works that represented composers at the top of their game. after studying monteverdi’s coronation of poppea, bach’s goldberg variations, and glass’s einstein on the beach i had been blown away by the amazing artistic and contemplative music that each had written. these pieces really make it for me as a listening experience, but to dissect them and understand how they are organized and the logic used to create them was very humbling. did i feel that my first vocal piece attain those goals? not really, but after writing large amounts of consumable music i really wanted to play in a different sandbox.
during this time i was also very taken with my friend and mental collaborator sean ferguson’s great piece society of the spectacle (2000?). watching its first performance was an electrifying experience and really motivated me to get off my ass and write. there are many similarities to both pieces (that should be discussed further) and we have had some great nights discussing my “plagiarism” of his work (the penultimate line in both of our pieces is plagiarism is necessary). the best thing of sean’s spectacle that i stole was the way he used levels of obliqueness to create meaning in his text . although i think philip glass’s non-narrative work einstein on the beach is the most important work written in the last 50 years, i do have one conceptual gripe with him and a few others. the non-narrative obliqueness of the text for three+ hours is a little much for my friends to endure. (i know… mtv generation) sean solved this problem beautifully by creating a non-narrative composition whose subject is vague and oblique (consumerism/alienation) and used levels of obliqueness to delay the first direct statement to the audience 3/4 of the way through his piece. he then retreats back into a more oblique setting of his libretto, leaving through the same rabbit hole he entered.
this was going to be my solution also… i could present a subject drama (oratorio) that contained a politically aggressive message by setting the text using various levels of obliqueness to obscure my “message”. as the piece unfolded it would i would come out of the rabbit hole and “get to my point” and then immediately retreat into the symbols and layers of the assembled text.
in short, i had a strong message to convey, but didn’t want to the performance to become “preachy” by dealing with the libretto in a direct fashion.
Bookmarks for July 16th through July 19th [del.icio.us]
Bookmarks from July 16th through July 19th:[del.icio.us]
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Jul 20, 2009 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: acting, america, anne midgette, anorexia, art music, blog/musings, comedy, commentary, consumerism, cool, critic, cronkite, culture, design, diet, environment, firefox, funny, guy debord, gwbush, hillary clinton, hollywood bowl, humor, jenny bitner, journalism, koyaanisqatsi, lacma, latimes, los angeles, map, media, musoc.org, news, philip glass, photography, politics, popmusic, propaganda, recovery, retrace our steps, reviews/press, salon.com, state department, war, wnyc | 1 Comment »