The Loose Filter Project

If John Cage were alive today

he'd dig this house-sized, nature-powered music box created by NOLA's Quintron.

If you liked Singing House you should check out Quintron's Drum Buddy. Acquire one and you could improvise trios with Fred Armisen and Lauri Anderson.

Pulp Fiction in chronological order and the inevitable majority of remix culture

Something I've wanted to see for years, Pulp Fiction in chronological order:

 

Plus, a very interesting thought about the inevitably rising majority of remix culture:

"For most people, sharing and remixing with attribution and no commercial intent is instinctually a-okay..... What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth?"

Temescal noir

Mason Bates performs his very cool piece The B-Sides with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

“It’s Just a F**king Little 16th Note. But You Have to Play It.”

Great short read about the best lesson ever learned from a teacher.

I left my quarter tone marimba in San Francisco

A few months ago I was fortunate enough to be asked to write an article for NewMusicBox about the SF new music scene. For the next few weeks I dutifly pounded the pavement (and Bay Bridge), met a lot of very cool folks, and heard some fantastic new music. The article, published last week (link below), centered around the remarkable Magik*Magik Orchestra, then branched out from there in a 6 Degrees from Kevin Bacon kind of way to explore the musical endeavors of several young musicians. It's a snapshop of a very cool scene.

Shake It To the Ground: SF Musicians Re-envision Classic(al) Career Paths

Special thanks goes out to Annie Phillips, who put me in contact with many of the musicians interviewed, and to Magik*Magik, Nonsemble 6, and the guys at The Living Earth Show for allowing me to attend their rehearsals.

The Living Earth Show in their fuzzy-walled rehearsal cave.

 

Yes, Jesus Loves Me - Free Ives Download

UPDATE: Well, the free download is no longer available, but you can hear Hilary performing some of the tunes found in the sonatas, as well as some Bach, courtesy of NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts.

Hilary Hahn on Tiny Desk

NYC's Q2 is commemorating Ives' birthday by offering a free download - today only! - of Hilary Hahn and Valentina Lisitsa's recording of Ives' Violin Sonata No. 4 'Children's Day at Camp Meeting. Great performance.

Performing Arts job plunge: sobering stats reveal rapidly growing fundamental crisis

The past few months have seen a steep decline in the number of performing arts jobs in the United States, with employment now at its lowest level since 1990:

More here.  It is now more important than ever for those of us in the performing arts to ask some hard questions about the sustainability of how we do what we want to do.

Brooklyn Phil Fall Preview

UPDATE: the audio is off the air, unfortunately. Mos Def's performance of Rzewski's Coming Together, was really something. Here's a different recording of the piece.

Frederic Rzewski - Coming Together

In case you missed it, here's the Brooklyn Phil's Fall Preview Concert featuring music by Mos Def, Frederic Rzewski, Lev Zhurbin, David T. Little and Corey Dargel. It's only up for a few more days.

 

Golijov introduces his works

Osvaldo Golijov discusses his works - nifty resource from WQXR. It's not the most in-depth stuff, but it's still nice to hear a composer talking about their works.

OPERA REMIX is here! Tonight!

Tonight at the State Theater in Modesto, California: Opera Remix, from Townsend Opera.  You can read all about it on the Remix webpage, but this event is a major foray into the real world for the Loose Filter philosophy (disclosure: I'm Creative Consultant for this project with the opera company...so any similarities are not coincidental at all).

Here's a clip from the reading rehearsal last night with orchestra only, playing Jonathan Newman's setting of Here Comes the Sun:

 

Enjoy a couple more rehearsal clips here (of Summertime and Baba O'Riley) from a playlist that includes gems from Mozart, Puccini, Gershwin, Led Zeppelin, Chicago, Pink Floyd, and more.  Keep an eye on the Opera Remix website if this catches your interest, there will be much more video of the event itself posted there soon!

I'll also soon be posting here, in installments, a user-friendly version of the research paper that started things rolling on this extremely innovative project from a wonderful regional opera company.  Stay tuned.

What happens when you let the students program the concert?

Being an entirely student-run ensemble, the Trinity Orchestra in Ireland does just that.  Their repertoire from last spring?  Daft Punk:

 

Their most recent concert featured The Arcade Fire.  You can follow them on Facebook here.

On second thought

Jonah Lehrer writes about how emotional decision-making may be better than rational decision-making when faced with complex choices.

While there is an extensive literature on the potential wisdom of human emotion, it’s only in the last few years that researchers have demonstrated that the emotional system (aka Type 1 thinking) might excel at complex decisions, or those involving lots of variables. If true, this would suggest that the unconscious is better suited for difficult cognitive tasks than the conscious brain, that the very thought process we’ve long disregarded as irrational and impulsive might actually be “smarter” than reasoned deliberation.