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.

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.

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.

Can I get a recording of that?

Really thought-provoking post from Nico Muhly on the difficulty many composers have acquiring recordings of their own works, and how having access to those recordings can be an extremely valuable learning experience. The discussion continues in the comment thread, and it is worth a read.

I remember a composer actually having to email me and ask me to return promo CD because he didn't have permission from the orchestra that performed one of the pieces to distribute it.

 

Rapture

Rapture is one of Anna Clyne's very cool electroacoustic pieces. Clyne is currently co-Composer in Residence with the Chicago Symphony.

Rapture by annaclyne

Allowing other folks to embed your music on their sites is a savy move.

Adams on Son of Chamber Symphony

John Adams talks about Son of Chamber Symphony via the London Sinfonietta's YouTube page. As a bonus, here's Stuart's great Listening Guide to Adams' original Chamber Symphony, one of Loose Filter's all-time most popular posts.

Good Programs: Brahms Unbound at the LA Phil

Gustavo Dudamel conducted some very cool programs with the LA Phil as part of its recent Brahms Unbound festival. I've always found it difficult to build really compelling programs around Brahms' symphonies because they are so thematically, harmonically, rhythmically, and texturally rich that not many works are both different enough to compliment them and strong enough stand on their own. The Dude does a nice job, though. Here are two concerts that I think worked particularly well.

Filter bubbles - pt. 2

In a previous post I talked about the filter bubble I've created for myself in terms of my classical music world view, and resolved to search out other voices that would add to a mostly one-sided discussion. It's been tough because there aren't many folks outside the classical music world writing about it, but here are a few interesting perspectives.

MetaFilter - classical music is not a big discussion topic on the blue, but a few posts have generated some great discussions and sobering perspectives. For example, from this thread:

Great orchestra sounds incredible, and is an experience not to be missed; no doubt. But am I sad that a member of the orchestra gets paid only $40k for their part time work doing something that they love, which is about what the average full time American makes? Not exactly. Is it right to think that Joe Cellist is a truly fundamental piece of any given local music scene? No. - felix

 

Good Programs: Ligeti, Glass, and Greenwood

Last weekend the Wordless Music Orchestra gave the US premiere of Jonny Greenwood's Doghouse for orchestra and string trio. Also on the program was Philip Glass' Symphony No. 4 "Heroes" and Gyorgi Ligeti's Chamber Concerto for 13 Instruments. I'd pay money to hear that. Here are live recordings from the show.

Philip Glass - Symphony No 4. "Heroes"

Gyorgi Ligeti - Chamber Concerto for 13 Instruments

Jonny Greenwood - Doghouse

 

Wise words from Colin Davis

The less ego you have, the more influence you have as a conductor. And the result is that you can concentrate on the only things that really matter: the music and the people who are playing it. You are of no account whatever. But if you can help people to feel free to play as well as they can, that's as good as it gets.

Astute observations from conductor Sir Colin Davis. I've always enjoyed his readings of the Sibelius symphonies, No. 7 in particular, and his recording of the epic Elgar Violin Concerto with Hilary Hahn is wonderful as well. You can read more from and about Sir Colin here and here. Photo by Jennifer Taylor.

John Cage Quote of the Day 8

        At all costs inspiration

must be avoided which is to say

act in such a way that inspiration

doesn't come up as an alternative

but exists eternally.

 

from 45' For A Speaker

John Cage Quote of the Day 7

Rhythm is not arithmetic. 

from 45' For A Speaker

Great performance Tuesday: Punch Brothers play 'Alex'

 

 

If you want more: Rye Whiskey will rock your socks off.

"It has indulged...a narcissistic avant-garde speaking in languages that repel the average committed listener..."

Bernard Holland pithily dissects the two basic sets of problems facing American orchestras, in a very perceptive article from 2003:

The free-enterprise system, which worked so admirably to bring the American city its new wealth, transferred poorly to the performing arts. [...] With good management, it is supposed, money and listeners will come rolling in -- again, a symptom masquerading as a cause. Orchestras are not sick because they have bad management. They have bad management because they are sick. Failing industries do not attract top employees.

[...] As for disappearing audiences, no amount of managing will solve that one. Classical music has only itself to blame. It has indulged the creation of a narcissistic avant-garde speaking in languages that repel the average committed listener in even our most sophisticated American cities.

[...] Fleeing audiences are one more symptom, the cause being a public art that has been abandoned by its avant-garde and uses up its given natural resources with profligacy. Audiences are not to blame. They are smarter than Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt want to think they are.

Definitely worth a read and some reflection....

Shane Koyczan reminds us of the magic of music

...at a poetry slam, talking about Beethoven:

 

Excellent FREE concert video: Concertgebouw w/Jansen

 

The Berlin Philharmonic's truly outstanding Digital Concert Hall offers up a gem, free of charge: a command performance for Her Majesty Queen Beatrix by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Mariss Jansons with Janine Jansen, violin.  Sooooo good.  And FREE.  Get it here.

(Program: Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Brahms Symphony No. 4.  Like spending time with old friends.)

100 composers under 40

 

Good stuff from Q2 and NPR: a crowd-sourced list of favorite composers under the age of 40. 

I'd bet each of the composers on that list has his/her own website with music on it...I'm just saying....

John Cage Quote of the Day 6

i think one of the things that distinguishes music from the other arts is that music often requires other people the performance of music is a public occasion or a social occasion this brings it about that the performance of a piece of music can be a metaphor of society of how we want society to be though we are not now living in a society which we consider good we could make a piece of music in which we would be willing to live

from I-VI (Cage's Charles Elliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1988-89)

Amazing: music listening and chat room for you and your friends, regardless of location

 

Listening Room is as simple as it sounds: create a room, have your friends join you, and anyone can play music from their computer for all to hear.  Plus, chat.  Completely awesome.

RIP Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, 1933-2010

Thank you for leaving us such wonderful music. 

 

 

Rethinking a very familiar piece, Beethoven's 'Moonlight' Sonata

Excerpt from a fantastic masterclass by pianist Andreas Schiff: "I don't know of any piece that has a layer of false tradition like this one."

Read this blog: Proper Discord

I recently discovered a terrific blog, Proper Discord: Trouble With Classical Music, and wanted to pass the link along.  Great stuff.

What's wrong with classical music, part 8 billion and oh hell I lost count....

The perenniel topic of "what's WRONG with classical music??" surfaces again in a thoughtful blog post over at 3QuarksDaily.  I agree and disagree with much of what Colin Eatock mentions in that piece (and am frustrated by some of the common misperceptions perpetuated in it), but it's excellent discussion fodder and it generated a  fairly interesting conversation in this thread over on Metafilter.  Food for thought.

If you haven't heard, Alex Ross has another fabulous new book out

Alex Ross hits another one out of the park (at least that's my opinion about 1/3 of the way through, and I don't see things falling off) with his new book Listen To This.  What's really fantastic about the book, aside from all of the great specifics, is the general philosophical approach to musical art that Ross takes in his commentary, explanation, discovery, etc.--he simply loves music, all of it, and makes no a priori distinctions about what can or can't be good.

Excellent overview from the New Yorker here.

There is even a FREE online audio guide on his website.

Read this, soon.

Dvorak 2 ways

Karajan and/or Gainsbourg

John Cage Quote of the Day 2

"There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time.  There is always something to see, something to hear.  In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.  For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible.  Such a room is called an anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special material, a room without echoes.  I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two sounds, one high and one low.  When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation.  Until I die there will be sounds.  And they will continue following my death.  One need not fear about the future of music."

Excerpt from an address given at the MTNA convention in 1957.

A simple means for endless fun

Incredibly fun music generator

Prokoviev 2 ways

LSO and/or ELP

Puckett on Rouse and some excellent listening, too

Joel Puckett is a friend who happens to be a very gifted composer, who also writes and teaches about other people's music wonderfully.  Recently he was asked to write a guest piece for the Baltimore Sun about a recent Christopher Rouse work, and it perfectly captures that sense of discovery and delightful surprise one can have hearing new musical works for the first time.  The whole very perceptive article is here--best bit:

As we walked down 65th street, we were collectively inspired by Rouse's willingness to push his expression. It would be very easy for him to sit back and write the same piece over and over for the rest of his life. Not that any of us were surprised that he is still a growing and restless artist, it was just dazzling to come face to face with such powerful evidence.

And don't take my word for it that Joel is a terrific composer--here he is working with the U.S. Marine Band (one of the great concert ensembles in the world, truly), in a rehearsal of his piece It Perched for Vespers Nine:

 

As good a use as any

Respect the sellout

From the fertile mind of Jeff Curnow, Associate Principal Trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra, a message for orchestral musicians everywhere.                                           

Punch Brothers play Bach

Band music on the radio

Scott Stewart at Emory University does a terrific summer radio series featuring works for band and wind ensemble on WABE in Atlanta.  Entering its fourth year, SUMMER WINDS is well worth a listen--and the first show is TONIGHT, so tune in here at 9:00 Eastern time to hear some goooood music.  The show will run on Tuesday nights from July 20 to August 31.

Also, if you do give the show and listen and enjoy, please be sure to give the station some positive feedback here so that they know this show is desired and enjoyed!

Why band music matters

From Steve Layton at the always excellent Sequenza 21, a great essay about the modern American wind band and its (earned but unrecognized) place in concert musical life, in the form of a review of several recordings.  A taste:

I had a teacher who once said that the sound of a symphony orchestra was one of the great achievements of Western civilization. Whether that’s true or not is open for debate, but there seems to be no question that the survival of orchestras in small to medium markets in the United States is in doubt. There are also artistic questions about the viability of the model that makes a symphony orchestra the center of a town’s musical life. Wind music, whose players are more plentiful than string players, and whose audiences tend to be more open to new music and new artistic situations, can assume a more central role than it has in most places now.

All of the pieces are in place, then, for bands to play an important role in the revitalization (or continued growth, depending on how you see the current situation) of concert music in the United States. What may be needed are artists, presenters, and patrons with the will and the imagination to re-invent musical life in their cities and towns.

Smile for the day: Shonen Knife covers The Carpenters

New project is up: the 21st Century Symphony

For your listening and viewing enjoyment.

Remix composition contest WINNER

The winner of our remix composition contest is up for your listening pleasure, congratulations to Robert McCarthy!

Check it out here. 

Laptop composer

No, not that kind of laptop composer, just a bit of Sunday fun instead.  Sound of Hamburg lets you compose music with Hamburg's citizens using a live video feed.  Choose from five different locations, each one featuring different music and a different way to compose.  If you'd rather play producer instead, Incredibox lets you create your own beats by combining different percussion and vocal sounds.  Enjoy! [via Smashing Magazine]

176 pitches per octave

Kyle Gann's fascinating post about his teacher Ben Johnston's Seventh String Quartet.  Here's a MIDI file of the first 30 measures.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Kyle's blog has opened up a whole new world of American music that I otherwise wouldn't have even known existed.

Music of the spheres

Our solar system as a music box. 

"It seems the wind ensemble’s image needs a makeover."

From Listen magazine, an excellent article on the creative surge happening in the wind band world: Beyond the Halftime Show: The American wind ensemble is quietly building a canon.

As the article quotes John Corigliano:

The repertoire of band music is largely contemporary. As a result, the audiences expect and look forward to new works. Listening in an environment largely ignored by the press, they learn to trust their own ears and respond directly to what they hear. Most important of all, concert bands devote large amounts of rehearsal time over a period of weeks — not days — to learning thoroughly the most challenging of scores.

So the appeal to composers is obvious.  If the medium continues to be more and more appealing to composers, well...where the composers go, so goes the musical culture.

(You can download Corigliano's absolutely fantastic symphony for band, Circus Maximus, here.  And it's only eight bucks.)

More on interpretation

I've been thinking about interpretation on and off since this previous post on the subject, and Allan Kozinn's New York Times essay, in which he compares Schoenberg performances by Boulez and Barenboim, has provided more food for thought.

But what was particularly striking was that the two conductors took interpretive approaches to Schoenberg that were poles apart: Mr. Boulez’s readings prized delicacy and transparency; Mr. Barenboim’s, raw power and heft. Both were highly personalized approaches, though you could argue that Mr. Boulez, by clarifying Schoenberg’s scoring details and structure, was offering something close to a literalist view, and that Mr. Barenboim, by magnifying the vigor he found in the music, was bending the music more overtly to his will.

This reminded me of a quote from Serge Koussevitzky, who felt that even performances that attempted to follow the score to the letter were influenced by the personality of the interpreter, sort of like the same beam of light passing through prisms of different shapes and sizes.

Some assembly required

If you're looking for really innovative American music that's somewhat off the beaten path, composer/musicologist Kyle Gann's blog is the place to find it.  In this recent post he talks about how much his career has focused on works (his and others) that push the limits of musical notation and challenge our established ideas of what constitutes a score.  Like many of Gann's posts, this one is full of audio clips and musical examples.

One of the themes of my life has become something I never expected.  I've based some large part of my career around documenting recent music not adequately represented by its score notation.  It stared with Narcarrow.  His scores contain all of his notes, of course, but many of them, especially the late player piano studies, don't provide as much explicit rhythmic notation as is actually inherent.

Preview: the 21st Century Symphony

Jonathan Newman wrote a really beautiful symphony recently, and I currently have the privilege of rehearsing it for performances on this coming Thursday (2/4/10), as part of my lecture-recital at ASU.  We will be taping and recording over the next week to create material around this fantastic piece to post online.  Keep your eyes on the site over the next month as we'll be adding a couple of new podcasts (including an interview with Jonathan, who is here for the performances), a recording of the symphony, video of a performance, and other stuff intended to illuminate this big, bold new work as well as open up the process of premiering something like this.

(His new symphony is something else, I'm telling you--keep watching this space for our take on the 21st Century Symphony!)