Hello lovely people

I know I said I’d be cross posting things here and at http://www.lownote.net for a while, but I apparently was lying. So make sure you point your browsers, update your RSS feeds, and all that and join me over at my new site

(New time on the air is 4-5pm Saturdays!)

Radio! 12/3/2011 2-4 pm

I’m filling in for the wonderful Corey Goldberg today starting at 2pm. The playlist will be up at lownote.net and you can listen in at wrsu.org. Expect some awesome music and some rusty mic breaks.

 

Play List 11/10/2011 1-3pm

Florent Ghys – Coma Carus – Baroque Tardif

Meredith Monk – Travel Dream Song – Atlas
Clark, Annie – Proven Badlands – ymusic
Plaid – At Last – Scintilli

Tom Waits – Raised Right Men – Bad As Me
Strange Things Done in the Midnight Sun – The Killing Wall – Untitled EP
Wilco – Capitol City – The Whole Love

Mogwai – Hunted By A Freak – Government Commissions: 1996-2003
Gill, Jeremy – Book of Hours: Vespers – Peter Orth
Gosfield, Annie – Brooklyn, October 5, 1941 – Lisa Moore

Twining, Toby – The Book – Eurydice
Mike Patton – Orgy in Reverb (10 Kilometers of Lust) – Adult Themes for Voice
Negativland – The Perfect Cut (11 minutes) – Helter Stupid

Muhly, Nico – A Good Understanding – LA Master Chorale, Grant Gershon cond
moha! – flisespikking/lyd med tenner/mjol di eiga kake
Fat Eyes – Overdose – Invasion of the Mysteron Killer Sounds

Paul Muller – Dark Sunset – Dark Sunset
Donatoni, Franco – Arpege – Sentieri Selvaggi

Faure, Gabriel – Adieu – Susanna Phillips, Myra Huang

Doors changing positions

In the last few months, this site has been extremely unevenly updated despite my best intentions. Various things have been stealing my attention: Beta Test is a needy child, but our Fall program was a lot of fun. There’s also been two power outages at home totaling over a week of darkness that really ends up messing with productivity.

Also, I’m starting a job soon. Starting Tuesday I’ll be back in the classroom teaching the munchkins music. It’s going to get my hands dirty again and interact with music in this way again (after over a year of not). The only casualty in this life change (I hope), is the radio show. It’s not really possible to host a radio show in New Brunswick while teaching somewhere else, so at least until the new schedule is set at the station, there won’t be any shows after this Thursday (11/10). It’s kind of crazy this will be my first time without a regular weekly spot on WRSU since early 2005. To cope, I’ll probably be pushing music on people on twitter and Google Plus.

Also, I’ll soon be moving this site over to my new home, lownote.net.  If you’re really interested, you can watch the ugly progress I make on the site as it goes, but it won’t be ‘live’ for a little while. I plan to pick at it slowly while balancing the rest of my life. Once it’s live, I plan to host streams of my shows for people to listen to as well as a lot more stuff about my own music making and educating. I think it’ll all be decipherable.

Anyways, definitely tune in this week because I won’t be pulling any punches. Also, if you didn’t read anything else I’ve written lately, make sure you head out to see Perfect Lives Manhattan tomorrow. And don’t forget the time change! I’ll be there unless this cold (I got from living without electricity for almost a week, whine whine) is still beating me up.

Oh, and hey, here’s a video from Beta Test’s Monsters program. It’s the piece I wrote for it, and you can thank my Mother for the cinematography.

Interview with Dave Ruder, Paul Pinto, and Jeffrey Young

This was a blast of a show, so find yourselves 100 minutes and give it a listen. More Information about Perfect Lives, ThingNY, Dave Ruder, Paul Pinto, and Jeffrey Young.

Show 11/3/11 1-3pm

Hey, I have no power thanks to snow-tober, but I’m right now this very second playing an interview with Dave Ruder, Paul Pinto, and Jeffrey Young talking about Varispeed’s upcoming Perfect Lives (Sunday 11/6 Washington square park 11am), and more!

Tune in at http://www.wrsu.org

Play List 10/27/2011 1-3pm

Gosfield, Annie – Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers: III – Lisa Moore
Adams, John C -American Beserk – Heidi Louise Williams
Bresnick, Martin – Caprichos Enfaticos: Strange Devotion – Lisa Moore, So Percussion

Worden, Shara  – A Paper, a Pen, a Note to a Friend – ymusic
St. Vincent – Surgeon – Strange Mercy
Beirut – Port of Call – Riptide

Mackey, Steve – It Is Time: Drums – So Percussion
Computer Paul – World Talk – Invasion of the Mysteron Killer Sounds
Slow/Fast – Kleine Helmet – It Would Be Easier If

Mogwai – Does this Always Happen? – Earth Division
Nico Muhly – Music Under Pressure 2 – I Drink the Air Before Me
Paul Muller – Super Moon Rising – Dark Sunset

Wagner, Melinda – Four Settings: Dickinson – Christine Brandes, Laura Gilbert, Alan Kay, Curtis Macomber, Richard O’Neill, Fred Sherry, John Feeney, Stephen Gosling
itsnotyouitsme – little wish – everybody’s pain is magnificent
Beethoven, L – String Quartet No. 1: I – Budapest String Quartet

Wilco – Sunloathe – The Whole Love
Dave Douglas – Frontier Justice – Orange Afternoons
Florent Ghys – Coma Carus – Baroque Tardif

Feldman, Morty – Trio (intro…?) – Marc Sabat, Rohan de Saram, Aki Takahashi

Play List 10/20/11 1:15-3:00pm

Hey! News is back on WRSU! So I’m starting at 1:15pm from now on….

I’ve been listening to a lot of Shostakovich, so we’ll see if that pops up on the show. Normally when I come into the station I don’t feel like listening to what I’ve been listening at home, but it’s Shostakovich, and I can rarely get enough of that when I’m in the mood for it. Also, last plug for Beta Test’s gig Saturday. Here’s the program notes and tickets. Since I like you, enter “Frankenstein” in the discount code for a few bucks off.

Wagner, Melinda – Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra: III – Joseph Alessi, NY Philharmonic

Curtis-Smith, C – A Civil War Song Cycle: Shiloh – Mary Bonhag, C. Curtis-Smith
Paul Muller – Super Moon Rising – Dark Sunset
Kourosh Yaghmaei – Gole Yakh – Back From The Brink

Fat Eyes – Clothes Pin Rhythm -Invasion of the Mysteron Killer Sounds
Jaoe Mardin – Turkish Waltz – Fairytales, Interrupted
Jazzfakers – Kenny G Voodoo Ceremony – Two

Jim Jackson – Jim Jackson’s Kansas City Blues Pt. 1 – Blues Classics
Galante, Carlo – Urban Ring – Sentieri Selvaggi
Bad Jazz Troupe – Breakdown Treat – Motor City Drum Ensemble DJ Kicks

Trumbore, Dale – Snow White Turns Sixty: sleeping beauty, rapunzel after the marriage, bluebeard’s wife – Gillian Hollis, Dale Trumbore.  Information about upcoming performances here
Davis, Don- Rio de Sangre: Act 1 finale – Florentine Opera Company
Jens Lekman – Waiting for Kirsten – An Argument with Myself

Florent Ghys – Pull Blanc, Chemis Rouge – Baroque Tardif
Wilco – Dawned on Me – The Whole Love
Zomby – Natalia’s Song – Dedication

White, Barbara – My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon – Tara Helen O’Connor, Alan Kay, Laura Frautschi, Sophie Shao, John Blacklow

Bookmarks Mid October 2011

I’ve been mostly successful at not letting the Internet distract me, so I haven’t been updating the bookmarks lately.

• Michael Monroe created some ring tones for the new school year. These are possibly more nerdy than my IT Crowd ring tone.
• Hilobrow on invisible censorship.  Also in here is a definition for the avant-garde that seems very useful. I’ve been reminded a few times a line of thinking that the modernist vision of the avant-garde is impractical in a post-modern world where fringes don’t exist, at least in the formal elements of music. That definition seems to ignore that there will always be cultural boundaries of taste, and the avant-garde will always be able to stand on the opposite side of that line.
• Warren Ellis on life irradiated by fiction. I have plenty of examples of books and albums with very specific location based memories. It also calls to mind site specific art, but I think the concept is more powerful when the art isn’t tailored to a specific place. Burroughs would deliberately read with his television on to note the random synchronicity of the world around him. Regularly the television or books would comment on each other and add layers of meaning to his experience of both.

Program Notes

My parents got new furniture in their living room, so for a few days all of the stuff stored in drawers and shelves ended up in piles waiting for new homes. One of the gems was this collectible program for Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love Express Tour (interesting to me, the tour features the E Street Band, but the album only only include a few of the members sparingly).

 

I found this while trying to decide if I wanted to create program notes for the upcoming Beta Test concert. I’ve recently seen a lot of hate for program notes. They’re bland and a barrier between the audience and performers. So, I was planning to tweet some snippets and then collect my thoughts to discuss on stage during the performance. But then, as if it was planted for me to see, I found The Boss’s connection to his adoring fans.

 

There’s a short essay on what Bruce was trying to do with the Tunnel of Love album and lyrics sprinkled around phots that evoke the musical material. My favorite is the bride with the nuclear reactors in the background, but there are also your typical Bruce is a rock star hanging out in rock star places images. It’s not ground breaking, but it is effective.

I think that is the problem with most classical program notes. It’s not that program notes are evil, but they’re often ineffective. Trained musicians often aren’t taught how to communicate with the written word or striking images, and if a performing organization is going to create program notes, they need to focus on using them for what they do best. Longwinded dense essays on the history of a piece of music can definitely send the wrong signals about classical music being a living art form. But that isn’t the only way ensembles can use printed material accompanying a concert. I resist the notion that sharing your passion for music is detrimental if it is printed inside a booklet.

 

(You can check out the program notes I wrote for the concert here. You can also pick up tickets on Ticket Leap. Hope to see you there!)