Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

Some amazing images by Marco Fusinato at ButDoesItFloat in a post titled Is there a connection between sound, vibrations and physical reality?

I subscribe to a few tech blog feeds and a lot of my friends I’m linked to via Google Reader have similar interests. There’s an endless supply new devices, apps, and games announced almost daily. Such an exciting time for tech lovers. And specifically for musician tech lovers.

Here is new take on the Tetris model called Chime. This one uses not only a point reward system, but also a musical reward…

It’s exciting to see how people are shaping how consumers access and interact with music today. Gives me a lot of inspiration.

This is all happening at:

Abrons Art Center – Link for tickets and map.
466 Grand Street
(at the corner of Pitt Street)
Lower East Side, NYC

Wednesday, January 13 is a benefit concert for the organization, honoring Wilmer Wise. Socializing begins at 6, concert at 7:30pm. Wine and refreshments will be served.

Wilmer will play a few solo pieces written for him by Jimmy Owens.
Brass Ecstasy tunes and Improvisations will follow, with:
Dave Douglas, John Zorn, Nate Wooley, Marcus Rojas, Vincent Chancey, Marshall Gilkes, and Clarence Penn.

Check out the rest of the week for more great music in this series called Forward Flight.

Wanted to say a few words about FONT, the organization. We’re a nonprofit, meaning all the money goes to music programs. Our work is to:
- Present as broad a range of music as we can in festivals throughout the year.
- Commission several composers for new music each year.
- Offer free educational programs for schools and for the general public.

This grass-roots support for emerging creative artists welcomes musicians who sometimes don’t fit in anywhere else. Nothing like this existed when I entered the scene–musicians supporting musicians. FONT has presented almost 200 trumpeters in all sorts of venues. Festival of New Trumpet Music has acted as an umbrella for funding ambitious new music projects by artists such as Bill Dixon. The organization also celebrates living masters and creative pioneers who have given so much of their lives to music and deserve the spotlight and acclamation of their peers.

Our commissioning series has included:
- 2006: Peter Evans, Cuong Vu, Du Yun with Micah Killion and The Practical Trumpet Society, Amir El Saffar, Jonathan Finlayson-Common Thread;
- 2007: Huang Ruo, Jason Palmer Quintet, Forbes Graham, Laura Andel with Taylor Ho Bynum & Gamelan Son of Lion, Nate Wooley with Paul Lytton and David Grubbs;
- 2008: Chris DiMeglio’s Imaginary, Nabaté Isles + 5, Reut Regev and the Brassix Ensemble;
- 2009: Nadje Noordhuis, Ambrose Akinmusire, David Sanford

Our Award of Recognition has gone to:
- 2008: Wadada Leo Smith
- 2009: Bobby Bradford

This is an all-volunteer organization (this year we hired our first part-time staffer, but with the hours required I’d say it still ends up being basically a volunteer position). As the director, I am deeply indebted to the hard work of Taylor Ho Bynum, Richard Johnson, and the ongoing support of Laurie Frink, Ted Daniel, Roy Campbell, Lewis ‘Flip’ Barnes, Jeremy Pelt, John McNeil, Mark Gould, Erol Tamerman, Mark Isham, and Wilmer Wise, all of whom have been intricately involved in making FONT programs happen. I am honored to be in the presence of so many people whose dedication to music compels them to contribute their time, energy, and resources in this way.

Join us to honor Wilmer and celebrate with everyone at the organization.

Anyone following this story about the anonymous Siguenza Festival attendee who complained because Larry Ochs’ music wasn’t jazzy enough will be interested to hear that the plot thickens. The Guardian’s Giles Tremlett has taken on the mission of finding the complainer, whose noise has ignited voices from all corners. This guy may just become jazz’s Joe the Purist. Amazing.

Update: The guy has been found. Now what? Read in the comments for news and links. Very strange story.

From The Guardian UK:

Spanish fan calls police over saxophone band who were just not jazzy enough

Jazzman Larry Ochs has seen many things during 40 years playing his saxophone around the world but, until this week, nobody had ever called the police on him.

That changed on Monday night however, when’s Spain’s pistol-carrying Civil Guard police force descended on the Sigüenza Jazz festival to investigate allegations that Ochs’s music was not, well, jazz.

Police decided to investigate after an angry jazz buff complained that the Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core group was on the wrong side of a line dividing jazz from contemporary music.

The jazz purist claimed his doctor had warned it was “psychologically inadvisable” for him to listen to anything that could be mistaken for mere contemporary music.

According to a report in El País newspaper yesterday, the khaki-clad police officers listened to the saxophone-playing and drumming coming from the festival stage before agreeing that the purist might, indeed, have a case.

His complaint against the organisers, who refused to return his money, was duly registered and will be passed on to a judge.

“The gentleman said this was not jazz and that he wanted his money back,” said the festival director, Ricardo Checa.

“He didn’t get his money. After all, he knew exactly what group he was going to see, as their names were on the festival programme.

He added: “The question of what constitutes jazz and what does not is obviously a subjective one, but not everything is New Orleans funeral music.

“Larry Ochs plays contemporary, creative jazz. He is a fine musician and very well-renowned.”

“I thought I had seen it all,” Ochs, who reportedly suffered a momentary identity crisis, told El País. “I was obviously mistaken.”

“After this I will at least have a story to tell my grandchildren,” the California-based saxophonist added.

Best wishes, Larry! And let it not be said that you can’t get arrested playing this music.

Great interview with Willard Jenkins over at A Blog Supreme.

“…I think baby boomers have to a great extent been products of arrested musical development; that is they have stayed with those more popular music genres — even to the point of being more invested in “oldies” of their development years than in current contemporary music — and have not grown in terms of their music sensibilities to embrace the more “serious” forms of music, i.e. jazz, classical, contemporary chamber music, opera, etc. Supposedly when we grow and develop we don’t for example continue to read books and publications that are geared more towards children or teens. So why not the same relationship with music?”

Obviously, it’s a little off their topic, but that question got me thinking…

As a person who is constantly seeking out new music in almost all genres, some of the most powerful music remains those records I heard in my formative years. I have a weird bond with them, and I think even people who don’t think of themselves as music appreciators do, too. I know every note of that album, every word, everything about them, what I was doing when I first heard it, and when the last time I listened to it. It’s almost as if, since the amount of music I had heard up to say 16 pails in comparison to how much I’ve heard now, an album stood on a superlative pillar of Nothing Like This Has Ever Been Done.

Like when I heard Kid A. My favorite Radiohead album hands down, and really the first of theirs that I REALLY got into. Most of my older friends say that record has nothing on OK Computer. And some of my younger friends say neither has anything on their newest. Not the best example since preference has a lot to do with it. But still, introductions to a band or album in those years are powerful. Just thinking now… American Beauty by the Dead — 7th grade mowing the lawn. Or Kind of Blue — 16 with headphones in my neighborhood library freaking out! So many vivid memories brought on by just hearing that first note.

I still get excited about new music. I work for a boss who delivers extremely exciting and inspirational albums to my doorstep every few months. And every year, I hear at least 30 albums that I think are 10-out-of-10. So I’m certainly not starved for content nor do I EVER hark back the days of old when music was “different.” But I have so much to compare everything to now. I understand a lot more about it. “Serious” music or not, I know that those albums have shaped what I listen to now (for better or worse), and that’s one reason why I continue to go back to them.

Not everyone wants to grow into new music. Some like to sit and listen to those records that changed them or simply to what they know. And this is present in jazz and other “serious” music today, too. But for those who continue to seek out new music in this new age of music consumption, it’s all right at our fingertips ready to be discovered by us and a new generation. And that feeling I got from those albums I heard in my formative years that I’m searching for to feel again will be felt by some other 16 year old.

Never ceases to amaze me what creative people can do with bare essentials and contact microphones…

While watching that, all I wanted to do was run the sound into a Kaos Pad and maybe some delay and get freaky.

–

From Google Reader feed from Make Magazine.

To a lot of us the arts are a crucial part of life in and of themselves. To judge the arts in terms of economic value or contribution to society seems both to miss the point and to handicap the arguments in their favor. In public policy, however, lots of tough decisions have to be made, and every possible angle must be explored to sway decision-makers.

That’s why I think this study from the Center for Arts Education is so important.

In New York City, the cultural capital of the world, public school students do not enjoy equal access to an arts education. In fact, in schools with the lowest graduation rates—where the arts could have the greatest impact—students have the least opportunity to participate in arts learning.

This report takes the first ever look at the relationship between school-based arts education and high school graduation rates in New York City public schools. The findings, based on data collected by the New York City Department of Education (DOE), strongly suggest that the arts play a key role in keeping students in high school and graduating on time…

Analyzing data from more than 200 New York City schools over a two-year period, this report shows that schools in the top third in graduation rates offered their students the most access to arts education and the most resources that support arts education. Schools in the bottom third in graduation rates consistently offer the least access and fewest resources.

It’s nerdy, but you can find the whole study here. With statistics about the arts flying around, this study seems like a concrete way of judging the power of the arts in human life. You have to hope that this will spark some action in a positive direction.

A new series was unveiled this week at A Blog Supreme. Jazz Now is a series of posts from some younger folks in the jazz community listing their Tops Lists of albums from the last 10 years. Each post has streaming music from each of the chosen albums.

Today, Lucas Gillan from the very-cool AccuJazz Radio offered his list which included Mehldau’s Largo — a hugely popular record in my college days — and a local Chicago favorite Herculaneum (who just released their third record). More lists to follow.

As a lover of Top 5 lists, really looking forward to digging on what I hope will be some previously unheard music.

A newish series of posts from Sasha Frere-Jones at the New Yorker called Dithering hit last week. The introductory post points to a Pitchfork article I hadn’t yet seen titled The Social History of the MP3 that’s a good read. And — how I got to the posts in the first place — Frere-Jones’ second post is an interview with Jonny Greenwood with some thoughts on digital media.