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Posts Tagged ‘reviews/press’

Bookmarks for December 5th through December 10th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks for December 5th through December 10th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from December 5th through December 10th:[del.icio.us]

  • Take a poll: Should I review Bocelli? – The Arts Blog : The Orange County Register -
    “A classical music critic is always a little out of place at an Andrea Bocelli concert. Generally, he’s the only one who doesn’t want to be there. A Bocelli concert, for all the tenor’s merits, for all his charisma, is about as classical as a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I’ve written reviews of Bocelli concerts before. As recently as last June. It’s kind of a no-win situation for a critic. If you’re totally honest, which I try to be, you always end up pissing someone off — i.e. usually the people who are bothering to read your review…”
  • jacktrip – Project Hosting on Google Code -
    “jackTrip is a Linux and Mac OS X-based system used for multi-machine network performance over the Internet. It supports any number of channels (as many as the computer/network can handle) of bidirectional, high quality, uncompressed audio signal steaming.” You can use it between any combination of Linux and Mac OS X (i.e., one end using Linux can connect to the other using Mac OS X). It is currently being developed and actively tested at CCRMA by the SoundWIRE group.
  • subway architecture -
    “london’s underground became the first subway system in the world when it began operation in 1863. since then, underground subways have been built in almost every major city of the world. from new york and paris to hong kong and dubai, subways are an essential part of public transportation in cities. within these systems, architecture plays a big role in defining the environment of the subway. here is a collection of some of the most architecturally interesting subway stations. “
  • RjDj -
    RjDj is a music and sound application for mobile devices with microphone and various other reality sensing sensors like accelerometer, touch pad, GPS etc. Currently the iPhone and iPod Touch are supported devices.
  • Cal State gets the wrong number in answering budget crisis — latimes.com
    “We seem to be quickly moving toward the day when the once-great Cal State system moves to a three-day week, with academic buildings rented out to storage companies and professors teaching class in parking lots and under trees. But even so, I was taken aback to hear they might be shutting down phone service at Cal State Long Beach. I drove to the campus to see if it was true. When I got to the office of Lisa Vollendorf, who runs the Romance, German and Russian department, I noticed that she still had a phone. “I still have mine, too,” said Jeff High, associate professor of German studies, who wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to make or take calls. Vollendorf, who is on the university budget committee, said turning off the phones campuswide was recommended by committee members as a way to avoid further cuts in instruction. The thinking was that professors could use personal cellphones to conduct school business.”

Dec 11, 2009 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for November 21st through November 25th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks for November 21st through November 25th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from November 21st through November 25th:[del.icio.us]

Los Angeles Eat+Drink – Fried in East L.A.: Antojito’s Carmen and the Breed Street Band of Mexican Vendors

“Until recently, the center of the Eastside street-food universe was located in a small parking lot on Breed Street in Boyle Heights, a nocturnal band of vendors drawing customers from as far away as Riverside and San Diego, serving sticky, sizzling, crunchy, meaty snacks from all over Mexico; salsas hot enough to burn small, butterfly-shaped patches into the leather of your shoes; and quart-size foam cups of homemade orange drink. Over here were huaraches; over there Mexico City–style quesadillas; crunchy flautas; sugary churros; gooey tacos al vapor. The vendors never stayed open quite late enough, but Breed Street had become something of an institution, a place to take out of town visitors, a great quick dinner before a show. Sometimes there were even clowns.”
  • Photo Gallery: Fried in East L.A. With Antojitos Carmen & The Breed Street Band of Mexican Vendors – Los Angeles Restaurants and Dining – Squid Ink -
    “Need a visual aid for your print edition? Jonathan Gold visits the Breed Street vendors of East Los Angeles (“once you abandon yourself to the magnetic chalupa forces you will be lured across the river again and again — the CIA could learn something about mind control from antojitos masters”). Click through for Anne Fishbein’s spectacular photos and read more in Gold’s Counter Intelligence, “Fried in East L.A.”
  • Categorical Enervative: The Trouble With Genres | Classical Music -
    People, we’re not really serious about adopting this “alt-classical” terminology, are we? I thought it was a joke, like “hobocore.” But no, it seems that there’s effort afoot to push it, un-ironically, into the classical lexicon.”"
  • Books of The Times – The Voice That Helped Remake Culture, From Terry Teachout – Review – NYTimes.com
    “With “Pops,” his eloquent and important new biography of Armstrong, the critic and cultural historian Terry Teachout restores this jazzman to his deserved place in the pantheon of American artists, building upon Gary Giddins’s excellent 1988 study, “Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong,” and offering a stern rebuttal of James Lincoln Collier’s patronizing 1983 book, “Louis Armstrong: An American Genius.” (wish this book was on kindle and it would be my holiday reading)
  • Los Angeles Eat+Drink – Choza Mama (j. gold review) -
    “Oh, Old Pasadena, dasher of hopes and destroyer of restaurants, a hostile, traffic-choked terrordome where only the strongest survive, where rents are breathtaking, where even the best-financed enterprises founder on the rocks. But out of the ashes of Hooters, within the very walls once saturated with testosterone and stale tap beer, comes Choza Mama, scion of the well-loved Burbank Peruvian restaurant, introducing Cusqueña and tallarines where once were Miller Lite and hot wings, and soft Latin American music where the likes of Hootie and the Blowfish once brayed”
  • MIDEM(Net) Blog: Bruce Houghton: Doesn’t It Feel Lately Like Everyone Is In The Music Business? -
    “The line between music fan and music professional has become difficult to draw. The demise of traditional media and rise of social networks means that fans are as powerful as publicists and radio promoters once were. Digital distribution has given everyone access to the consumer that was once funneled through a few. Everyone with a web site had the potential for global reach. I’m an authority, not because Billboard prints my words, but because I do. The Bad News: Everyone is your competitor. The Good News: Innovation is everywhere. It’s time to stop worrying about the bad and start embracing the good”
  • When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth -
    “Introduction: I’ve changed careers every two or three years ever since I dropped out of university in 1990, and one of the best gigs I ever had was working as a freelance systems administrator, working in the steam tunnels of the information age, pulling cables, configuring machines, keeping the backups running, kicking the network in its soft and vulnerable places. Sysadmins are the unsung heroes of the century, and if they’re not busting you for sending racy IMs, or engaging in unprofessional email conduct it’s purely out of their own goodwill. There’s a pernicious myth that the Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear war; while that Strangelove wet-dream was undoubtedly present in the hindbrains of the generals who greenlighted the network’s R&D at companies like Rand and BBN…” (great story… make sure to read the woodie guthrie copyright quote”

Nov 28, 2009 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for October 24th through October 31st [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks for October 24th through October 31st [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from October 24th through October 31st:[del.icio.us]

  • Brow Beat : The DORF Matrix: Towards a Theory of NPR’s Taste in Black Music -
    “In the weeks since the publication of the All Songs Considered list, I have been puzzling over NPR’s musical coverage—in particular, its approach to black music. I wondered: Could NPR’s musical taste be as lily-white as the “The Best Music of 2009 (So Far)” list? After scouring NPR’s Web site and studying its broadcasts—All Things Considered profiles, Fresh Air interviews, even the music interludes played between segments on NPR’s marquee programs—I can report that the answer is no. It’s not that NPR doesn’t like black music. It merely maintains a strict preference for black music that few actual living African-Americans listen to.”
  • why i’m not afraid to take your money« by amanda fucking palmer -
    “I know this for myself – it’s something you’ve done since you were six years old, and there’s a sense that if you stop giving 100% you are doomed to failure, and that is unacceptable. No wonder so many players hate their sport – the surprise is that so few admit it.” And despite all the kudos, money and silverware, there’s a reason it’s the top players who suffer most – because they’re the ones playing the most tennis, as they don’t get knocked out in the first or second round. So they have the least free time, the most mental stress and suffer the most physically. Agassi’s avowed hatred for his sport is far from exclusive to tennis. British cyclists Chris Boardman, the former Olympic pursuit champion, and Tour de France star David Millar have both admitted to not really liking cycling. “In Boardman’s case,” says William Fotheringham, the Guardian’s cycling correspondent, “he liked the winning not the cycling itself, and he drove himself to win.”
  • Why did Andre Agassi hate tennis? | Sport | The Guardian -
    “I know this for myself – it’s something you’ve done since you were six years old, and there’s a sense that if you stop giving 100% you are doomed to failure, and that is unacceptable. No wonder so many players hate their sport – the surprise is that so few admit it.” And despite all the kudos, money and silverware, there’s a reason it’s the top players who suffer most – because they’re the ones playing the most tennis, as they don’t get knocked out in the first or second round. So they have the least free time, the most mental stress and suffer the most physically. Agassi’s avowed hatred for his sport is far from exclusive to tennis. British cyclists Chris Boardman, the former Olympic pursuit champion, and Tour de France star David Millar have both admitted to not really liking cycling. “In Boardman’s case,” says William Fotheringham, the Guardian’s cycling correspondent, “he liked the winning not the cycling itself, and he drove himself to win.”
  • don’t care about old composers-rogerbourland.com -
    “I asked Aaron Copland what he was composing in fall 1976: “Nothing, and I am not accepting commissions; if people want to play my music, there’s plenty of it available in my catalog.” Today I went through an old journal, listing old UCLA Music faculty and their appointments and salaries. I looked at all the composers and saw their careers over a span of decades. I sighed and thought about how none of their music is heard these days. And I’m sure that this is true for every music school in America.”
  • Brand (Dis)Loyalty « The Quick and the Ed -
    “A couple of days ago a message popped up on my Tivo informing me of a new service, “Blockbuster on Demand.” Ah, Blockbuster. That takes me back, to that period of about four years when all of the mom and pop video rental stores had been driven out of business but Netflix hadn’t yet arrived, so the only way to rent a movie was to drive to the nearest Blockbuster, spend ten minutes trying to find a place to park, discover that your first eight choices were unavailable, wait in line for fifteen minutes, and be informed by a surly, inattentive clerk that you owed the Blockbuster corporation 27 dollars in late fees and other assorted charges. snip This is what happens when organizations use their monopoly status to mistreat customers. Sooner or later the world changes, your monopoly is gone, and you pay the price… If there’s one thing that’s pretty certain, it’s that people will have more education choices in the future than they’ve had in the pas
  • Music review: ‘Einstein’ at the beach | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times -
    So “Baby Einstein” won’t make your kids smarter after all. Last week, the Walt Disney Co. confessed that plopping kids in front of its video does not count as instant education and offered to refund gullible parents their money. But the few enlightened parents who tried “Einstein on the Beach” instead may have a wiser tale to tell. Saturday night, Jacaranda, the West Side’s new music series, concluded its first concert of the season at First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica with excerpts from Philip Glass’ groundbreaking opera he conceived with director Robert Wilson in 1976. Glass offers the option of replacing the women’s voices at the end with a children’s chorus and that is what Jacaranda did. Asking youngsters to show up late at night to sing the last eight minutes of a five-hour avant-garde work is, obviously, unreasonable. Then again, little about putting on “Einstein on the Beach” has ever been practical…”


Nov 02, 2009 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for July 16th through July 19th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from July 16th through July 19th:[del.icio.us]

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  • WNYC – New Sounds: Minimalist Music Theatre (July 2009) -”Minimalist Music Theatre 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”
  • Big Brother Is Listening – The Classical Beat (Anne Midgette) – washingtonpost.com - -Anne Midgette neatly sums up musoc.org “But statements like “Art Music is in many ways objectively superior to Pop ‘Music’” (note the quotes) make me grit my teeth and want to play Talking Heads albums really, really loudly. And this, from the FAQ, is just stupid: “The ‘music’ is melodically, harmonically, rhythmically, structurally, texturally, dynamically, thematically and conceptually barren compared to Art Music; it’s also spiritually and politically shabby by comparison. It’s short, trite and highly repetitive.” One is tempted to order a copy of Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” for the site’s editors, just for starters, but one wouldn’t know where to send it. Indeed, there’s something vaguely creepy about musoc’s deliberate anonymity, which is evidently part of its philosophy, though there are limits to how much an audience will care about what a website says if one doesn’t know who’s writing it.”
  • Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com – In the hours and hours of preening, ponderous, self-serving media tributes to Walter Cronkite, here is a clip you won’t see, in which Cronkite — when asked what is his biggest regret — says (h/t sysprog): What do I regret? Well, I regret that in our attempt to establish some standards, we didn’t make them stick. We couldn’t find a way to pass them on to another generation. It’s impossible even to imagine the likes of Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw and friends interrupting their pompously baritone, melodramatic, self-glorifying exploitation of Cronkite’s death to spend a second pondering what he meant by that.
  • Philip Glass to perform film, opera works at Hollywood Bowl – Los Angeles Times – With “Koyaanisqatsi” — the name means “life out of balance” in Hopi — Glass had more than two years to work on the score. “There was no one waiting for the film — there was no distributor! So we were left alone to make a film — which I realized later was a great luxury.” Today Glass is struck by how pertinent the film seems, at a time when its notions of the world’s interconnectedness and the runaway power of technology have gone mainstream. But the film’s identity has changed since its premiere in 1982.”When we first showed it,” he says, “people thought it was a head trip. People seriously thought you had to get high before you watched it. It wasn’t too long, only four or five years, for people to realize there was actually a movie.”
  • Guest Blog: The Actors Diet: How I’m Recovering – Carrots ‘N’ Cake -Guest Blog: The Actors Diet: How I’m Recovering “…I’ve been struggling with binge eating and anorexia for a while; if you read my bio on our blog page you’ll see a little more about my history with food. I know a lot of women look up to actresses, and there are plenty of them who are in great shape, healthfully (my co-blogger Christy being one of them). As somebody who has been celebrated for her figure (in my feature film debut I played a ballet dancer AND got naked), I am proof that sometimes it is a false ideal, even when you have all the resources available to you, like a personal trainer, meal deliveries, a shrink, hypnosis coach, a best friend who’s a nutritionist…I felt like I had legitimate reasons to obsess about my weight – after all, my career depended on it.”
  • Intolerable Beauty: Chris Jordan Photographs American Mass Consumption – Photographer Chris Jordan describes the photos in his series “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption” as his “first foray into being an engaged artist.”
  • US State Department employees ask Hillary clinton for Firefox – Video – “Have you been trying to get your corporate IT staff to let you use Firefox or another web browser instead of Internet Explorer? Then you apparently know how a fair number of folks at the US State Deparment feel. At a recent town hall meeting with staff, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a question from one government employee who wanted to know if they could “please” use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. You can see the Q&A by skipping to the 26:32 point in the video above. ” [del.icio.us]
  • Los Angeles News – Russian or Armenian Mob Used “Model Employee” Con at PCH Arco --
    An organized-crime ring that police believe is Russian or Armenian targeted a high-volume Redondo Beach Arco gas station, assigned a low-level soldier to infiltrate it and waited eight months while he worked himself into a position where he could implant a tiny, high-tech “skimmer” to steal customers’ credit-card information.
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Jul 20, 2009 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Bookmarks for July 1st through July 3rd [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks for July 1st through July 3rd [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from July 1st through July 3rd:[del.icio.us]

  • Jazz: The Music of Unemployment: Twitter killed the video star – christopher weingarten makes the point that crowd sourcing killed great music. because there is lots of “who” you should listen to, but not much “why” (via andrew durkin)
  • AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com -a good cure for the summertime blahs
  • Los Angeles Eat+Drink – Snook Attack: La Chente – johnathan gold again tempts me with his food porn. “Have you ever encountered pescado Zarandeado? Because it is as intimidating as an entrée can get, a vast, smoking creature split open at the backbone and flopped open into a sort of skeleton-punctuated mirror image of itself, wisps of steam rising around the onions and lemon slices with which it is strewn, served on the kind of plastic tray you may remember from your high school cafeteria, which is probably the only vessel broad enough to handle the fish. As served at Mariscos La Chente, a Westside restaurant specializing in the seafood dishes of Sinaloa and Nayarit, it is so menacing that you scarcely know whether to eat it or beat it to death with a stick.”
  • Industrial Jazz Group – ReverbNation -now that i’m on break i’m looking forward to listening to the IJG’s latest album LEEF. “Frustrated by the limitations of “Jazz, the Institution,” but equally resistant to the confines of modern pop, the Industrial Jazz Group has slowly pioneered a middle way. Its music is an idiosyncratic blend of rock, bebop, cartoon soundtracks, blues, funk, Balkan music, doo wop, and, well, a lot of other stuff. (In the end, it’s neither “industrial” nor “jazz,” so don’t let the name fool you.)”

Jul 03, 2009 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Bookmarks for June 26th through June 29th [del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from June 26th through June 29th:[del.icio.us]

  • Los Angeles New Music Ensemble – looks like there is a new music group in town.  welcome aboard!  “The Los Angeles New Music Ensemble (LANME) is an organization created to promote new music, collaboration within the arts, the commissioning of new works, and the creation of multimedia presentations within innovative live performances. To further these goals, LANME is dedicated to learning and playing the best and most exciting new chamber music around.”
  • New school board members ready for challenge – LA Daily News -former John Marshall High School colleague Steve Zimmer is interviewed as he prepares to become a school board member. “Zimmer admits that scarier than dealing with a billion-dollar deficit is the idea of not being on the campus of Marshall every day. It will be interesting to see if someone immersed on the ground level can translate that experience to doing a good job on the board,” Zimmer said.” As a teacher, Zimmer has also been a very active member of United Teachers Los Angeles, which has prompted some to believe his vote will always follow the powerful union’s stance. I don’t accept that voting on the side of the union is siding against students,” he said “
  • laboratory tests of vegan restaurants in la | vegan food and living in Los Angeles -
    very interesting blog post that tests a number of LA restaurants to see if their food was really vegan. (fyi: i’m not and my wife is a pescatarian) although there were some meals that were obviously misrepresented as vegan, it seems the biggest culprit might be the mislabeling and mistranslation of food from the taiwan to us markets.
  • A Chapter from The Listen: Music for 18 Musicians – these excerpts are being touted as a new type of music criticism and a new way to attract audiences. i hate to throw a bucket of cold water on these ambitious young writer/composers, but the excerpts are overwritten and seem musically naive, trying to impress a faculty advisor in grad school. hence exhibit A and B: “
  • And now melody. And now melodies. The melodies here being the playings-out of the harmonies. The harmonies being the on-ringing of all the melodic notes” “
  • The harmonies are one harmony that absorbs the up-till-now waves of the other harmonies, that absorbs the leftover pulses. This accumulated on-ringing describes a recognizable environment… —a single addition to the bottom of the harmony—acts as a diaphragm, allowing this environment to open and to breathe in”
  • this play by play description doesn’t work for me and its certainly not the way i would want people to read about my music. i think a better tack would be to try and distill what makes these pieces great.
  • You balance the budget – Los Angeles Times -Try your hand at closing California’s budget shortfall, estimated at $24 billion. It’s not easy, but it can be done. Cut spending, raise taxes and/or borrow to get the state out of the red. For each choice — drawn from proposals from across the political spectrum — we’ve tried to give some sense of the effects. As you craft your proposal, the Deficit Meter will show your progress.
  • The tragic end of Michael Jackson: The Jeruselum Post – very tragic michael jackson quote that is further proof that fame is not a replacement for love “I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame, and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That’s all. That’s the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have an ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved, because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it.”
  • I’m in a band… -via S21, i’m glad to see other composer/performers starting their own groups
  • Just Released: “New World Ardor”- NetNewMusic – willam houston’s new (and very enjoyable) post-apocalypse party music. reminds me of john oswald’s ‘plunderphonics’

Jun 30, 2009 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Bookmarks from June 15th through June 16th:[del.icio.us]

Bookmarks from June 15th through June 16th:[del.icio.us] the arts monastery project – “The purpose of The Art Monastery Project is to produce art that is relevant to the contemporary world yet is informed and inspired by tradition. Our strategy is to apply the disciplined efficiency and contemplative serenity of monastic life to art production. As [...]

Jun 16, 2009 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Bookmarks for May 28th through May 31st [del.icio.us]

These are my links for May 28th through May 31st: New early music group debuts in O.C. – The Arts Blog – OCRegister.com – CONCERT REVIEW: The musicians of Natur offer a century-spanning, enthusiastically performed program in their first concert in Seal Beach. The Orange County Register, May 31, 2009. Homeless encampment under I-10 freeway [...]

Jun 02, 2009 | Categories:bookmarks | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

fall 07 del.icio.us links

fall notable reads (things you might have missed and are worth checking out) Music That Thinks Outside the Chamber, Anne Midgette“For Gil Morgenstern, a violinist and concert presenter, the epiphany came when an acquaintance informed him that the two most boring words in the English language were “chamber music.” her suggestion: alternative classical? i wish [...]

Dec 09, 2007 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

RealNewMusic Review: Tim Mangan/OC Register (2006)

RealNewMusic Review: Tim Mangan/OC Register (2006)

tim mangan (oc register) has a well written review of our performances at the realnewmusic festival. his descriptions of the evening and performances were spot-on. it was not one of our better shows, but i’m real proud of how the group handled it. in the middle of the show we ran into a buzz saw, on some nights a tear like that can ruin the rest of the evening but we ended with a strong performance of my modular piece 11/25/05.

i’m pretty dissapointed at my reaction to the performance (more introverted than extroverted). i talked it out and know that every night is not going to be perfect. my drug of choice is a good show and nothing puts me in fowl mood than falling short. on a performance like saturday night’s i have to find ways to temper my frustration. i’m really happy with the direction of the group and wouldn’t change a thing. being able to write, rehearse and perform is a great alternative to the infinite sadness of life.

tonight we are playing at the scene in glendale around 9pm with pruitt igoe and the hearers. what could be better than having a drink with the pbe?

mention the blog and get free ringtones!

google map

btw…tim is also a blogger. you can view his latest pictures and comments of the construction of the orange county center for the performing arts new segerstrom hall.

Jun 26, 2006 | Categories:reviews/press | Tags: , , | 2 Comments »

acf-la composer's salon, sunday april 17th

the pbe has been asked to perform on april 17 at the upcoming acf-la composers salon. evidently somebody just cancelled at the last minute. whether its good luck or somebody noticed our recent good review in the la times, but i’ll take it. so far i’m planning to perform two mvts. of retrace our steps. [...]

Mar 24, 2005 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

which file extension am i?

i found this quiz while browsing the blog magnificent octopus. kind of serendipitous, i thought i might be a .ogg. Which File Extension are You? her blog also contains a pre-review of the new Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 7, “A Toltec Symphony”. given my feature in this week’s OC Weekly, i’m sure not to ever [...]

Jan 16, 2005 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

there must be something in the air

there must be something in the air, or i’m in a real hypersensitive place. many of my favorite bloggers are musing on some really interesting topics. so many, that my head hurts and wish the earth’s rotation would slow to ponder them more. uTopianTurtleTop blogs about critics condescension. i especially agree with his thoughts on [...]

Jan 11, 2005 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Long Beach (2004)

Long Beach (2004)

after a few days to ponder, i can say that i have mixed feelings about last weekends performance in long beach.

the great thing was that it was a big audience, especially for a new music concert (classical/alternative?). we are starting to draw beyond our ‘friends and family’, which is the typical for most independent chamber ensembles/new music groups in los angeles.

we all do our thing, but most groups pull 15-50 people a night, with at least half the audience being ‘friends and family’. this concert was a big step for us. we also got an assist from ellen griley of the OC Weekly. she put a great plug for us in their classical section. thanks ellen!!

in the actual concert we did play pretty well, but didn’t find our footing until the second half. retrace was much tighter and act III went especially well. nicole gave it a B+, i think it was probably a B-.

i really wanted to play the whole concert at a higher level.

i am addicted to that feeling you get when the ensemble is tight.

we all know it

nothing needs to be said

time stops

all of the problems disappear

the audience is transported

those little moments make life worth living

Oct 23, 2004 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

canary in the coal mine?

i usually don’t like to post twice a day, but anne midgette from the ny times posted her review of the critical conversation blog/event at artsjournal.com i almost got up and cheered when i read this enlightened quote. ‘The discussion offered fantastic food for thought, and everyone seemed to enjoy taking part. For one thing, [...]

Aug 22, 2004 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

What hell is going on with classical music?

Yeah, what about it? I think one of the problems is the definition of it. Let’s say you like some music you hear, it’s not pop music, it doesn’t sound like Bach or Mozart, it probably could have been written the last few years. What do you call it? How do you describe it to [...]

Jun 29, 2004 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »