Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Check out this great interview with Paul Motian over at WNYC. His latest — Lost In A Dream with Jason Moran and Chris Potter — released yesterday and sounds great from the samples I’ve heard.

Tweet props to Fully Altered for passing on that link and a million others.

A great part one of a new feature on the Secret Society blog called the Composition Vivisection. Darcy details 10 bars of his piece, Zeno, with written and audio examples.

The caveat:

WARNING: these vivisections are, necessarily, unapologetically technical. As I mentioned in the comments to the previous post, I don’t think listeners ought to feel they need to be concerned about process. The important thing is the art, not the steps along the way. That said, should you, for reasons of your own, actually want to see how the sausage is made, click below to continue reading.

Looking forward to the next installment.

Last week, we noticed Dave Holland launched a new site featuring the new Archival Series: Volume One. The album is killer as you might expect. Not only can you listen to it all the way through at his site, the limited-time offer to buy the MP3s for $1 or $3 for the lossless ends today (Monday, 15th). I suggest you get clicking. From the name “Volume One,” we can only hope for many more to come.

I have a new listening project. It’s a pretty mammoth undertaking. As you can assume from my job and past posts, I am an avid listener of music. I love vinyl. I love CDs. I love digital. All means to the same end: experiencing great music from jazz to rock, folk to metal, prog to lo-fi and everything in between.

The project? Listening to all the songs in my library in alphabetical order.

I started at the beginning yesterday: “¶ª” from the Trap Door International Psychedelic Mystery Mix (special characters are sorted first). I made it all the way through “Achilles Last Stand” by Led Zeppelin. Today, I started with “Acorda amor” from Joyce’s killer Passarinho Urbano album, and while I write, I went from “Adagio for Strings, Op 11″ to Springsteen’s “Adam Raised A Cain.” Next up: “Adam’s Apple.”

Given the diversity of my library, some of the transitions are pretty rough — the aforementioned Barber to Springsteen is a great example of that. But I am discovering and rediscovering some great tunes from people that have been lost in the massiveness of the library.

I pointed to an interview for the New Yorker awhile back in which Jonny Greenwood said:

SFJ: What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of the MP3 age?

JG: The downside is that people are encouraged to own far more music than they can ever give their full attention to. People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis’ record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row—there’s just too much to get through. You’re thinking, “I’ve got ‘Sketches of Spain and ‘Bitches Brew’—let’s zip through those while I’m finishing that e-mail.” That abundance can push any music into background music, furniture music.

Read more.

I will admit, I fall into that a lot. I own far more than I can digest. That’s one reason why I like vinyl. 20 minutes, switch, 20 minutes, done. That’s also one reason why I’m doing this. I want at least 1 legitimate play count on every tune, and I want to delete the things I don’t like. Not that play counts are proof I digested everything, but it’s a start in dealing with my library.

It will take me 88 days, 18 hours, 16 minutes, and 56 seconds to get through this. Wish me luck.

In Palo Alto all week with the full Keystone crew, creating the music for our new score, Spark of Being — you can watch a short advance trailer here.

This announcement just went out for those in the Bay Area.

Friday, January 22, 2010
6pm to 7:30pm at CCRMA stage.
The Knoll, Stanford Campus.
Free.

Dave Douglas and the five musicians in Keystone (Marcus Strickland, Adam Benjamin, Brad Jones, Gene Lake, DJ Olive) will play and record new music for an open audience. They will be playing new pieces composed by Douglas for the multi-media collaboration with film maker Bill Morrison, Spark of Being, which will premiere on campus on April 24, 2010.

The session will consist of one or two takes of live performance by the band, followed by a brief explanation of the process and the goals of the recording, as well as a description of the next steps necessary to finish the production. Questions will be welcome. Audience will also get to hear playbacks, either through speakers on the stage or in the downstairs control room. The piece incorporates new computer technologies in performance, and this session will attempt to describe that work as much as it can be described in the discovery phase. The band will also record a piece to a live projection of Bill Morrison video art, and open a discussion about the collaborative process.

The session will be filmed for documentary purposes by Meghan O’Hara.

Dave Douglas and Keystone are thrilled to be creating this work at CCRMA on the Stanford campus.

Thursday, January 15. All part of the Festival of New Trumpet Music.

New York premiere of Wuorinen’s Brass Quintet, as well as Epithalamium, for two trumpets, and Big Epithalamium, for eight. New York Trumpet Ensemble, under the direction of Mark Gould, will also perform a 2005 FONT commissioned composition from the composer Du Yun, Air Glow, for five trumpets and laptop. After intermission, chamber music for trumpet, string quartet, and percussion by Ornette Coleman.

Here is Charles Wuorinen performing in 2008:

Around 1992 I found Charles Wuorinen’s book, Simple Composition, in the Brooklyn Public Library. I thought, “At last! My problems are over!” Little did I know, they were just beginning… The book had a profound effect on me and spurred a whole new approach to composing for improvising small groups.

This master composer can also be seen in an interview with Frank Oteri at American Music Center’s New Music Box.

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.

Terrestrial broadcast as well as the cyber-flavored at WKCR.ORG.

The Low Anthem performs at Paste Magazine Studios in 2008:

‘This God Damn House’, Written by Dan Lefkowitz, Performed by Ben Knox Miller, Jeff Prystowsky, Jocie Adams, Dan Lefkowitz.

Next Friday, January 15, at 9pm, the band will play at the Abrons Art Center as part of FONT Music (tickets here). They’ve been kind enough to invite me to play a couple tunes with them. Can’t wait.

It’s part of a bill with Chicago Underground Duo with Rob Mazurek at 7:30; Opsvik & Jennings with Ignite a Noise Trumpet trio at 6:30; and more… full details here.

UPDATE: They’ll be on Letterman on the 14th.

It’s complete and total war, my friends. Asked Jeff for his take on the comment thread and this was his response. I told him I had profound disagreements with much of this, and he replied that “It is a point of view to be discussed (as opposed to disgust).” Have at it.

The idea of practicing is to learn, not to perform. But, playing with a metronome insists that one performs, not learns! This makes it an anti-academically friendly device since the study of anything new is best done out of time, not in it! Example: try and learn a new language “in-time”!

Secondly, I almost have never met a player/teacher who didn’t confuse learning with art. They are not the same principles and do not require the same approach. This means that you don’t learn how to play the same way that you play. In academic practicing, one has no need to practice in metronomic time, no reason whatsoever. It is a popular belief and it is a myth. Most teachers do not separate learning from performing in their lessons which is why so many players really aren’t getting much better. Just realize that in art, every great player on every instrument who got their time and feel didn’t get it from a metronome.

And lastly, name any new experience anywhere that requires the learning of that thing in time. Even a child’s first steps, or cooking a new recipe, or one’s first driving lessons are all “out of time”. If this is so, and if everything that is learned is best learned out of time, then why do some musicians go against the same logic that applies to everything else? Metronomes have no history of helping one play in time because the moment that a conductor waves his baton, or the drummer plays his first beat, the entire metronome lessons is now negated, replaced by a HUMAN approach to time and feel. Here is proof! No musician in Africa, no musician in South America, no ethnic group anywhere in the world, no regional band, nobody anywhere on Earth learned how to feel music and play it in time by using a metronome. If just about everything on Earth does not require an in-time apprenticeship to learn how to do well, then why would a musician try to push a principle that has no precedence in anything else that is learned in-time.

Thanks for reading.

An ad from Metronome Magazine: