Why do the assholes always outlive the good guys?
Read moreTwo of S21’s favorite people are getting married…to each other. One of them is Brian Sacawa. The other member of the wedding is playing it coy but feel free to guess. Unless, of course, you know for sure, in which case hold it down until the intended makes the news public. Steve Smith gets credit for making the shidekh.
Read moreWith at least 135 recordings (by my quick count) now in circulation, one would think there wasn’t much Philip Glass music that hasn’t already been submitted for the judgment of history. One would be wrong. Orange Mountain Music has just released the second of a planned series of 10 CDs winnowed from the vast archives that Glass has assembled over the past 40 years. The recordings—most of them captured during live performances–span the entire range of Glass’ work and include music for film, theater, dance, and concert hall in a wide variety of scores including chamber music, solo instruments and orchestral
Read moreConlon Nancarrow died 10 years ago today in Mexico City. Pliable has a nice writeup, and quotes György Ligeti praising Nancarrow as the most important composer of the second half of the twentieth century. I like Nancarrow but that strikes me as generous and raises the question–important to whom? To other composers? Maybe. To the small percentage of human beings who like contemporary classical music? No way. UPDATE: Here’s the Kyle Gann link I was looking for.
Read more“I had always heard by reputation of the high regard accorded the folk-ballad singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. But I was so engaged in developing my orchestral technique during the years when Dylan was heard by the rest of the world that I had never heard his songs. So I bought a collection of his texts.” John Corigliano, in program notes for his Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan On the other hand, Dylan probably didn’t catch The Ghosts of Versailles either.
Read moreFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Fallto: New Release from Drifting In Silence Chicago,IL – August 7, 2007 – Labile Records announces its latest release from recording artist Drifting In Silence. The latest release, Fallto, is a continuation and further development of themes introduced in Truth, and Ladderdown, from 2005 and 2006, respectively, completing the cycle of this trilogy work. Fallto has been described as shoegaze meets dancing shoes. Listeners familiar with previous work from Drifting In Silence will recognize the trademark prismatic tonalities and looping rhythms suspended in an ambient mix. Fallto brings these previous threads together, and makes its own statement
Read moreI don’t ski. Asthma. And fear. Mostly fear. I used to party a bit though and because many of my companions were ski buffs, I have socialized, but not skied, at some of the best places in the world. I have not skied Kitsbuehl and Chamonix and Lillehammer, for example. I have not skied Aspen and Telluride and Jackson Hole. Especially, I have not skied Verbier, the favorite hangout of some rowdy Norwegians of my acquaintance. We have been thrown out of the Feed Club, Verbier’s most lively nightspot, not once, but twice over the years, not a record I’m sure but respectable
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: The British — reserved wet-blankets all, right? Ha! There’s an ecstatic light that burns in each of these composers’ work, though in very different ways: The laser: Brian Ferneyhough (b. 1943) “Brian Ferneyhough is a composer whose every work probes afresh and ex nihilo the extremes of the musically and technically feasible and stretches the limits of notation. His music is conceived as an ongoing process of transcendence,
Read moreSome interesting fodder for conversation in this month’s Gramophone. Item #1, there are more than 4,000 one-handed piano pieces for the left hand but no more than 75 for the right. Jeremy Nichols reckons that it’s because when great pianists are injured it is invaribly their right arm. His evidence is purely anecdotal, but convincing. Item #2 is related to this week’s big Focus on Death meme. We all know that cigarette smoking killed Webern but did you know that Enrique Granados died after the ship he was on was torpedoed by a U-boat and he jumped out of a lifeboat to
Read moreCheck out Frank J. Oteri’s great interview with Indie rockers Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, aka The Fiery Furnaces, over at New Music Box. Thanks for the shout-out, dude.
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