One of the forms of experimental music that I'm most drawn to these days is glitch core (all electronic. ambient. no vocals, please). I can't put my finger on it, maybe it has something to do with the sounds themselves. But I respond to it, physically, in much the same way that i respond when playing Bach's keyboard works.
More about the glitch scene here. And, yes, I believe it is cheaper than therapy.
Listen up here.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Feeling Creepy
We've long known about the effects of infrasound, but this older BBC article got me to thinking about how I might go about manipulating it as part of the aesthetic experience as well:
"But in a controlled experiment in which infrasound was pumped into a concert hall, UK scientists found they could instil strange feelings in the audience at will. "
Link
For example, something along the lines of what these folks are up to. Check 'em out.
or these folks.
"But in a controlled experiment in which infrasound was pumped into a concert hall, UK scientists found they could instil strange feelings in the audience at will. "
Link
For example, something along the lines of what these folks are up to. Check 'em out.
or these folks.
Mental Illness and Composers
An interesting article that looks at the relation between mental illness and creativity as exhibited in composers. Of course, it's highly suspect work since all these folks are long since dead and can't really be asked to lie down on the couch and answer questions. Still it makes for food for thought. Consider this:
"Schumann, Kogan explained, wrestled with wild mood swings, throwing himself into the Rhine River and dying in a mental hospital. "He had bursts of creativity that alternated with suicidal depression. I read about that and realized I'd seen this behavior in my patients. You look at (Schumann's) music, and he has instructions like, 'Play fast,' followed by 'Play this faster.' His thoughts were often racing - and you find that in his music."
Read the rest
here
"Schumann, Kogan explained, wrestled with wild mood swings, throwing himself into the Rhine River and dying in a mental hospital. "He had bursts of creativity that alternated with suicidal depression. I read about that and realized I'd seen this behavior in my patients. You look at (Schumann's) music, and he has instructions like, 'Play fast,' followed by 'Play this faster.' His thoughts were often racing - and you find that in his music."
Read the rest
here
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Glenn Gould in Fine Detail: Art
A fine series of paintings of pianist Glenn Gould by artist Heidemarie Schäfer are online to be admired here. They are quite beautiful.
And then there were six: news from the Rubinstein Piano competition
Semi-finalists have been named for the Rubinstein competition:
" The group is comprised of China's Jie Chen, 19, who studies in Philadelphia; Ukraine's Alexander Gavrylyuk, 20, who has studied in Australia for seven years; Russia's Tatiana Kolesova, 20; South Korea's Minsoo Sohn, 28, who studied in Boston; South Korea's Yeol Eum Son, 18; and Russia's Igor Levit, 18, who studies in Hanover."
Details here
" The group is comprised of China's Jie Chen, 19, who studies in Philadelphia; Ukraine's Alexander Gavrylyuk, 20, who has studied in Australia for seven years; Russia's Tatiana Kolesova, 20; South Korea's Minsoo Sohn, 28, who studied in Boston; South Korea's Yeol Eum Son, 18; and Russia's Igor Levit, 18, who studies in Hanover."
Details here
Newly Discovered Work by Beethoven Performed
And continuing with the theme of recently discovered works by the Masters comes news of this work by Beethoven:
"The rare musical manuscript, in Beethoven’s own hand, dates from 1815, the year of the Battle of Waterloo. Part of a series of tunes commissioned by an Edinburgh publisher, George Thomson, they are now up for auction and expected to sell for about £400,000. Beethoven’s score for Highland Harry - whose chorus Burns picked up "from an old woman in Dunblane" - was described by one expert yesterday as a jaunty piece that used a bass "drone" to give a folksy feel." More Here
"The rare musical manuscript, in Beethoven’s own hand, dates from 1815, the year of the Battle of Waterloo. Part of a series of tunes commissioned by an Edinburgh publisher, George Thomson, they are now up for auction and expected to sell for about £400,000. Beethoven’s score for Highland Harry - whose chorus Burns picked up "from an old woman in Dunblane" - was described by one expert yesterday as a jaunty piece that used a bass "drone" to give a folksy feel." More Here
A Lost Work by Mozart Discovered?
Piano and lacrosse
A fine story on lacrosse player Nick Pinto's passion for the piano.
"This other side of him, the musical side, started about age 8, around the same time Nick first picked up a lacrosse stick and years after his brother had already taken to the keys of the old piano. (''I always remember," Pinto said, ''trying to play my brother's pieces.") It blossomed years later when the new model showed up, a bit unexpectedly." The rest is here.
"This other side of him, the musical side, started about age 8, around the same time Nick first picked up a lacrosse stick and years after his brother had already taken to the keys of the old piano. (''I always remember," Pinto said, ''trying to play my brother's pieces.") It blossomed years later when the new model showed up, a bit unexpectedly." The rest is here.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Self-Financed Recording of Bach's Goldberg
What a great lead-in:
"Nestled in the often-bypassed upper reaches of Manhattan on the Hudson River, the musty, neoclassic auditorium stands in a tranquil, dignified time warp. The stage is in the Academy of Arts and Letters, with a lamp out of a 1940s film noir illuminating the lone Simone Dinnerstein, hunched over a Steinway in stocking feet, playing Bach with the focus of a neurosurgeon."
Read More.
Nicely written.
"Nestled in the often-bypassed upper reaches of Manhattan on the Hudson River, the musty, neoclassic auditorium stands in a tranquil, dignified time warp. The stage is in the Academy of Arts and Letters, with a lamp out of a 1940s film noir illuminating the lone Simone Dinnerstein, hunched over a Steinway in stocking feet, playing Bach with the focus of a neurosurgeon."
Read More.
Nicely written.
curious and strange performance
A curious and strange little review (or should that be performance) of Italian pianist Gianluca Cascioli. The reviewer writes:
"Cascioli began by straying on to the stage like a wraith, giving an oddly quick little bow, and then launching into the Mozart with a fierce intensity that at first was riveting. But throughout that boyish face betrayed not a flicker of emotion, and at the end he vanished off-stage like a mirage."
Read the rest of it here
"Cascioli began by straying on to the stage like a wraith, giving an oddly quick little bow, and then launching into the Mozart with a fierce intensity that at first was riveting. But throughout that boyish face betrayed not a flicker of emotion, and at the end he vanished off-stage like a mirage."
Read the rest of it here