Don’t miss this piece in last Sunday’s LA Times about recording engineers for classical music. As the author, Constance Meyer, says, popular music engineers and producers are often famous in their own right, but most people can’t name a single classical music engineer or producer. “Yet just as in rock ‘n’ roll or hip-hop, the engineer for such music — who is often, though not always, the producer as well — is the person who makes or breaks an audio performance.” Meyer goes on to profile Max Wilcox, Da-Hong Seetoo, Fred Vogler, and Armin Steiner, and to describe a bit of how
Read moreOur revivified Monday Evening Concerts opened its second season of its new life last night. This was an evening of MEC as we had been hoping for. The program gave us music we wanted: stimulating and sometimes challenging music; some new composers and new music, along with some to link to earlier times; music performed by very talented musicians; music in a hall with good sound; music to make us feel glad we had come. And almost 300 of us came out Zipper Hall at Colburn School to hear and enjoy. The new and most challenging music was in the
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: 2005 Snapshot: Music at Northwestern University Obviously a picture from a warmer season… Northwestern has a killer location, right on Lake Michigan, just a bit north of downtown Chicago. I’ll be heading that way for a week in late January (tagging along for my wife’s special management class), and in honor of the visit I thought I’d share the site linked above, full of streaming
Read moreDear Jerry, You are cordially invited to a program featuring the music of Pat Muchmore as performed by the erstwhile and talented members of Anti-Social Music. The gala shall be held at the Ukrainian National Home at 2nd Ave between 8th & 9th streets on December the Thirteenth, where the finest beers and vodkas will be available to soothe the savage humours stirred by the oft-acrid tones emanating from the stage. Also available: pierogies and other Ukrainian delicacies–some of which may be forcibly shoved down the gullets of less attentive patrons. A number of works excreted by Muchmore’s fecund mind
Read moreIt’s that time of year again when critics make lists. The New York Times musical luminaries have made their choices which include, by the way, a couple of items on my list which I’ll be revealing in these very digital environs in due course. First, however, I thought we should do a community list. What were your favorite new music releases in 2007? Oh, hell, let’s make it favorite live performances too.
Read moreBig news on the time-marches-on front. Deutsche Grammophon (DG) yesterday became the first major classical record label to make the majority of its huge catalogue available online for download with the launch of its new DG Web Shop. The DG Web Shop allows consumers in 42 countries to download music, including–the press folks claim–markets where the major e-business retailers, such as iTunes, are not yet available: Southeast Asia including China, India, Latin America, South Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe including Russia. Almost 2,400 DG albums will be available for download in maximum MP3 quality at a transfer bit-rate of 320 kilobits
Read moreFrom the BBC: Croatia rose to the occasion in their crucial Euro 2008 defeat of England – after an apparent X-rated gaffe by an English opera singer at Wembley. Tony Henry belted out a version of the Croat anthem before the 80,000 crowd, but made a blunder at the end. He should have sung ‘Mila kuda si planina’ (which roughly means ‘You know my dear how we love your mountains’). But he instead sang ‘Mila kura si planina’ which can be interpreted as ‘My dear, my penis is a mountain.’ –more– Today’s topic–embarassing public performances. Your own or others.
Read moreIf you’re in the San Diego/Tijuana region today, or if you happen to be at your computer at 6 pm PST, tune in to KSDS FM (88.3), our beloved jazz station, to hear yours truly and Ellen Weller interviewed about our forthcoming Unsilent Night performances. I don’t know if this is a first for Unsilent Night worldwide, but we are entered as a participant in a holiday parade: The North Park Toyland Parade, Sat. Dec. 8 at 11 am, marching down University Ave from Utah to 32nd St. I set up a Facebook page called Unsilent Night San Diego with
Read moreThe new Pope with the Prada slippers whose name nobody can remember, and who is, by the way, German, is apparently banning modern music in the Vatican. Seems he thinks that Pope Gregory pretty much nailed it and is backing his chief enforcer–Mgr Valentin Miserachs Grau, director of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, which trains church musicians, who says that there had been serious “deviations” in the performance of sacred music. “How far we are from the true spirit of sacred music. How can we stand it that such a wave of inconsistent, arrogant and ridiculous profanities have so
Read moreI have a vague recollection of an article in the Sunday Times sometime in July of one of the last ten or so years which compared the decline of twelve-tone music (or maybe atonality or maybe modernism in general, but I think it was twelve-tone music) to the fall of the Soviet Union. I wonder if anybody remembers it and can possible cite its date and author. Thanks
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