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Katamari Fugato
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuAEzTahg9o&feature=youtube_gdata_player] At one point in the summer, my whole house became obsessed with the playstation game Katamari Damacy. One of the many pleasures of the game is it’s witty soundtrack, which features a handful of themes arranged in different music parodies. I’ve been thinking about this particular piece, written as a strict fugue, for the…
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Food for thought.
Esa-Pekka Salonen: “[I became increasingly interested in] the physical properties of music. That sounds silly, it’s like saying, ‘During my career as a chef, I became increasingly interested in how food tastes.’ But there we go. It shows you what kind of hole music had dug itself into at that point. It’s a profoundly different…
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Opinionated
1. james rhodes The Guardian has a short profile/interview of the first classical soloist to be signed to Warner’s rock label. He sounds like a swell guy, and I don’t want to make any judgments on his music without hearing it, but a couple things mentioned in the interview make me curious. Rhodes is also…
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Music and Technology
A recent New York Times story looks at the efforts of the Borromeo String Quartet* to incorporate more technology into their music making, including playing from full scores displayed on MacBooks controlled by foot pedals. One thing that I thought was really interesting, and was a good example of the give and take that comes…
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Prelude
Via Noble Viola, this kind of wacky chamber version of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdZYXAjeNj4&feature=player_embedded] It’s amazing to me how the different orchestration creates a completely different piece; the string section in the orchestral version does so much to create the impression of a verdant, secluded glade (that’s always where I imagine the…
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Bolero?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8po7FZonP-I] Posting has been a little light of late. The school year has started, and that means that I’ve been scrambling around trying to figure out where my time should be going each week. As of yet, this has not included the blog, but I do like to blog to procrastinate, so I hope that…
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Yeol Eum Sun
I love this video of Yeol Eum Sun performing Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze,” from Cantata 208. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNJdjtNxop0&feature=player_embedded]
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Andras Schiff on Beethoven
I’ve just discovered the lectures, archived at The Guardian, that Andras Schiff delivered covering all 32 of the Beethoven piano sonata. They’re fascinating, showing the way that a performer approaches the sonatas from both a theory and performance perspectives. They have already made me much more familiar with these genius compositions.
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Work is Work
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=276oR_tEmbs] One of the projects that I watch closely is El Sistema USA, a movement to implement a version of the Venezuelan music organization El Sistema to the United States. One of the main partners in this initiative is the New England Conservatory of Boston, and the Boston Globe had an article yesterday about the…
