Peter Sellers gives a rendition of “Hard Day’s Night” in high Shakespearean style.
Category Archives: Music
≡
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
The twelve composers of Christmas. I love the Stravinsky and Beethoven bits. [via mmmusing]
≡Favorite Albums of 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
I’m not limiting myself to 2008—I’m never that up-to-date, and you already know about Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver without my telling you. I spent some time sorting through my iTunes and came up with albums that I bought or first gave a serious listen to this year. I made selections month-by-month: January Stardust is [...]
≡
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Emmet Connolly collected a bunch of worthy quotes from reading Brian Eno’s book, A Year with Swollen Appendices. I didn’t figure him to be so cantankerous. My two favorites: I gave a talk about self-generating systems and the end of the era of reproduction ‚Äî imagining a time in the future when kids say to [...]
≡
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
“I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.” —Stravinsky
≡Doctor Atomic at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Monday, November 24, 2008
Doctor Atomic is a new-ish opera about Dr. Oppenheimer, his team, and the first test of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. I saw the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s semi-staged version on Friday night. It was all played and sung well enough. Parts of it were good. Some parts were outstanding—Oppenheimer’s aria on John Donne’s Batter [...]
≡
Monday, November 24, 2008
Though I’ve been a percussion player/enthusiast for a number of years, I’d never heard of a hang drum until I got clued in at Crushing Krisis last week. Hang is like a hybrid of a steel drum, gamelan, and an udu. Here’s a video of some hang playing. It’s a pretty sweet instrument and it’s [...]
≡
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
I recommend Wieland Samolak’s 1993 album, Steady State Music: When I was a teenager I used to sit on an empty field listening for hours to the sounds of distant cars, railroads, helicopters, and other motorized objects. These sounds, which are very rough and noisy when they are near, attracted me from the distance because [...]
≡
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
To celebrate its 120th anniversary, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is giving away a symphony every day. Yes, please. Here’s the selection: Franz Schubert – Symphony no. 8 ‘Unfinished’ Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony no. 2 Felix Mendelssohn – Symphony no. 4 ‘Italian’ C?©sar Franck – Symphony in D minor Gustav Mahler – Symphony no. 1 [...]
≡
Thursday, October 16, 2008
NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century, with excerpts from each.
≡A Romance on Three Legs (review: 4/5)
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Spoiler: Katie Hafner‘s book, A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano, is one of the most enjoyable I’ve read this year, a really nice little page-turner. Glenn Gould was one of the great pianists of the 20th century, known as much for his personal quirks as for his musicianship. [...]
≡
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The latest MacArthur Fellows got their genius grants today. Among them is one of my favorite writers, Alex Ross.
≡
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
I was listening to my last.fm library this afternoon and noticed that Johann Sebastian Bach is on tour, 300+ years and still going strong.
≡
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
A Day in the Life of a Musician by Erik Satie: An artist must regulate his life. Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from [...]
≡
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
An archive of record covers from Blue Note Records. [via dial "m" for musicology]
≡Weekly muxtape, heartbeat edition
Monday, August 18, 2008
I’m not as thrilled with this one as I was with the unusual editon last week, but it’ll do. You might recognize the opener from the 28 Days Later soundtrack.
≡
Friday, August 15, 2008
Is it harder to write a sonnet than a great hip-hop verse? The literal rules for writing sonnets, tankas, haikus etc. aren’t particularly hard to follow. It’s following the rules and actually saying something that’s hard. You can write a sonnet that makes no sense, and has no real power in the words. Likewise, you [...]
≡Weekly muxtape, unusual edition
Monday, August 11, 2008
The only reason I put together the unusual edition is because of the first track “Strange Overtones”. I’ve been repeating that religiously since I heard it earlier this weekend. I haven’t had a track get such heavy play since “Weird Fishes”. Other highlights include Victor Wooten’s sick bass solo around the 2-minute mark in “Oddity,” [...]
≡Weekly muxtape, daybreak edition
Monday, August 4, 2008
Highlights in my fifth Monday muxtape include a more relaxed, non-heavy-metallic Judas Priest; my good friend and brilliant jazz vocalist Kat Edmonson; an obscenely catchy tune from Peter, Paul & Mary; a quiet little number for percussion ensemble; and some Yeasayer—the bass just kills me. Can’t sit still when that one comes up.
≡
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Remembering the genius whom Stanley Kubrick stole music from, a nice remembrance of the life and music of Gy??rgy Ligeti. Ligeti is well-known for Po?®me Symphonique For 100 Metronomes and his piano etudes like Devil’s Staircase. And lots of other good stuff. I also came across an interesting video of a visual listening score for [...]
≡Weekly muxtape, inclement weather edition
Sunday, July 27, 2008
My fourth muxtape is ready for your aural pleasure.
≡
Sunday, July 20, 2008
I stumbled on a video of Glen Velez playing a frame drum. I saw him in a workshop a while back when I was in college. Insane skills. We also did some overtone singing, but one of the coolest things I remember was him improvising a little solo with shakers, with all kinds of mind-bending [...]
≡Weekly muxtape, never edition
Sunday, July 20, 2008
This week’s installment at mlarson.muxtape.com.
≡
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Andr?°s Schiff did an 8-part series of lectures on all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.
≡Weekly muxtape, citrus edition
Sunday, July 13, 2008
My second muxtape in an ongoing series of indeterminate length. Some static hiss on the last track, but it’s a hot performance.
≡
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Classical and pop reviews 2, Greg Sandow’s follow-up to his previous post on the topic: Certainly we’re not immersed in classical music because we want to check whether the latest pianist to come along really knows what to do with Beethoven — whether her tempo in the slow movement of some sonata really is correct [...]
≡Weekly muxtape, dream edition
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The first in a series of themed weekly amusements. Get your fix while you can at mlarson.muxtape.com; I forgot to post earlier this week and I’ve got a new edition coming in a few days.
≡
Sunday, July 6, 2008
I stumbled on a couple music reading lists on Amazon. Daniel Levitin suggests 11 books to read on music. Songwriters on Songwriting could be good and I’m especially curious about The Art of Practicing. And Alex Ross wrote a top twenty guide for 20th-century music, both books and recordings. I’m curious about John Cage’s Silence [...]
≡
Monday, June 2, 2008
Bed?ôich Smetana in an commercial for a Czech beer which inspires The Moldau.
Subscribe