26 June 2009

Transformer di Roboter covers Michael Jackson's Stranger in Moscow. Make sure to turn your speakers all the way up:

23 June 2009

Synesthesia via Kitsune Noir. Beautiful and strange.

21 June 2009

Moving, again, in about a week. I wonder when this will stop becoming a yearly ritual (slash feat of strength) for me. First to Washington, CT, to dump the contents of my apartment on my parents for a month (thanks, parents!) and then moving all that to NYC in August.

Moving involves lots of interesting chores. For instance, finding creative ways to use up the varied contents of the pantry and refrigerator:

6 June 2009

For the past 13 years or so I've had these reels of 1/2-inch tape sitting in the top of my closet. They were made by the legendary engineer David Hancock, the last recordings he made before his death (of Parkinson's disease). I must have been about 11 when these tapes were made, and had been studying piano with his wife, Eleanor, for a couple of years.

Gene and Jason at the Fred Plaut studio rolled out their reel-to-reel machine the other day and helped me transfer them to digital files:

Motion blur. That tape is going by at 30 inches per second!

Here is 11-year-old me playing Prokofiev's third piano sonata (approximately six and a half years before I learned what the marking p stood for):

Here is a little about the microphones David apparently used to record this.

Here are the Fred Plaut's microphones, all in a pile:

$40,000 worth of microphone. And a razor blade!

3 June 2009

The original cartoon that predicated this piece got lost a couple years ago, so I decided to re-draw it from my memory. I think this one is better because there is an added dog/sheep.

1 June 2009

I've been doing headshots for a bunch of musician friends over the past few months. It's a pretty enjoyable way to spend time, and mutually beneficial as well. My subjects always start out kind of awkwardly smiling into the camera for a few seconds, then turning away, self-conscious, and I like the process of getting them to gradually forget about the camera and act as though we're just hanging out. Here are some of my favorites so far (click to zoom):

 

31 May 2009

20 May 2009

This is an informative feature on my favorite hot sauce, Sriracha (which is apparently everyone else's favorite hot sauce, too). Earlier today I put together a pretty basic sausage/peppers/onions grinder and garnished it with some quick Japanese-style pickles and a squirt of Sriracha. I pronounced it "good".

18 May 2009

Lens is a new photo blog from the New York Times. I wasted a good half hour on here this morning when I should have been writing for this, designing this, or reducing that.

PS. New audio excerpts are up for Bathtub Shrine and Senior; take a listen.

16 May 2009

Just got back from Los Angeles and Baltimore, where I experienced life as a touring musician for the past week. The Big Gig with the LA Philharmonic went splendidly; I wish I could post a recording of Nightjar up here because John and the Green Umbrella crew made it sound so good, but alas, the unions (or at least their lawyers) would demand my head. Not only were the musicians consummate professionals, as I had expected, but they really cared about making Payton's and my music sound like real music. When I asked percussionist James Babor if he could try a different ratchet sound for the opening, there was immediately a multiplicity of different ratchets seemingly conjured from midair, everything from Toy to Industrial.

John, Payton and I did a little Q&A with Helane Anderson, an artistic administrator at the LA Phil, which you can listen to here. There was also a bunch of press about the event: a preview article in the LA Times, and a review from Mark Swed ("strangely Darwinian" as my friend Andrew points out).

To cap the week, I was supposed to share a concert with fellow composer-pianist Tudor Dominik at Strathmore down in Bethesda, MD. Only, about two weeks before the show, Dom injured his hand (skateboarding? that was the rumor) and couldn't play, doctor's orders. So I filled out my program with a little Rzewski and Ives, in addition to the Marshall, Andres, and Steve Gorbos (who was in attendance with his entourage!). The venue was a nice contrast from the huge, sleek Disney Hall— a large 19th-century living room of a converted mansion, which couldn't have held more than 100 seats. I actually prefer playing in such intimate spaces; strangely, I'm able to concentrate better, even though the front row is nearly sitting in my lap. The lovely producer of the series, Georgina, greeted me how, henceforth, everyone should greet me post-concert— with a bottle of water in one hand, and a glass of booze in the other.

5 May 2009

Hannah Collins, one of my frequentest and most loyal of collaborators, asked me to wright her a piano-less cello piece about a month ago. So I went and wrote her a piece with Hammond organ. Ha! Sure showed her. Thanks to prodigious acquirer of outdated musical equipment Jack Vees, I got to play a real live Hammond B3 last week rather than a MIDI imitation. The piece is called Fast Flows the River and here is what it sounds like (You can hear the noise of the motor making the enormous speakers slowly rotate):

Fast Flows the River. Hannah Collins, 'cello; Timothy Andres, Hammond B3

4 May 2009

29 April 2009

Snuck into the second half of Rufus Wainwright's New Haven show a few days ago. Just him alone on stage, singing and playing the piano/guitar, but still I was entranced. I don't think I've ever seen someone more comfortable with the role of "performer". Perhaps he is a little chatty for my tastes, but it seemed to make the girls swoon (somebody please explain this phenomenon to me).

I especially like this new song, "Zebulon", about a would-be conquest from middle school; instead of going into a nice chorus where you'd expect, it just sits on a repeated, unresolved chord for awhile and starts a new verse. Good for him for not trying to resolve said chord in the end.

17 April 2009

31 March 2009

29 March 2009

Sam doesn't have a website or even a MySpace (!) so there's no way I can point you to a recording; Sam, get yourself a domain. You'll have to do better than www.samadams.com, though.

NEWS FLASH/UPDATE: Sam actually does have a website.

27 March 2009

25 March 2009

Back to op. 111. This piece totally undermines the simplistic idea of Prokofiev as the "happy Soviet", the self-portrait he so obligingly paints in the fifth symphony. It out-Shostakoviches Dmitri. The first movement is a kind of slowed-down tarantella in e-flat minor, one of the darkest (and most difficult) keys. The middle movement is a sprawling militaristic mess that I can't make head of tail of. And the last movement starts out as a sunny, jaunty rondo with more marching soldiers, but in the end, which Alex writes about— I don't want to spoil it, but it's wonderfully tragic and creepy. The last chord is a trademark Prokofiev cackle, but in this case it just makes you shudder.

I'll write about the seventh symphony some other time. That piece is like the Russian great-grandmother I never knew.

24 March 2009

We got reviewed! Anthony Tommasini has nice things to say about the New York Youth Symphony, ACME Quartet, and Senior.

13 March 2009

Kind of a big week for website redesigns… at least among sites I frequent. Pitchfork's was long-overdue— it hadn't changed a bit since I started reading it as a freshman in college. The new website is clean, lovely and much richer (though admittedly the bar set by the old one was pretty low; it didn't even have a working search function). However, the aesthetic cleanliness brings with it a much more corporate feeling (I'll leave the implications for others to debate). I also think the grid structure feels overly complex; it's hard to tell which information is most important at first glance, even though it's all presented quite clearly.

Also, Facebook— I feel as though for all the attention it gets, nobody talks about why Facebook is such a fantastic platform, which is that they are totally obsessed with design. Like Apple, the Facebook designers aren't afraid to make sweeping changes for the better, even if it means getting some bad press and vocal complaints (remember when they launched the news feeds?). The new page layout is an incremental change, but the grid feels more natural and organized now. The font size for wall posts went up a notch, making communications a bit easier to read and creating a nice hierarchy of information. And I like the new rounded corners on profile pictures (round rects are everywhere).

OK, back to part-making (new piece for the Yale Symphony. Working title: Bathtub Shrine.)

10 March 2009

I spent last Sunday in Flushing listening to the ACME quartet and NY Youth Symphony play Senior for the first time; with two weeks to go until Carnegie I think we're in very good shape. The quartet already sounds fantastic— can't say I'm surprised, what with such illustrious membership. The orchestra members need perhaps a little more time for the music to "settle". Ryan took my advice and mercilessly cut back the string sections (which are otherwise HUGE) and the piece sounded appropriately buoyant and nimble, really like slightly beefed-up chamber music in some parts.

I'm really excited for what's sure to be a memorable concert. The orchestra is also playing Carlos Chavez's Sinfonia India (which is apparently about... Incas? Aztecs?) and Brahms 1, both of which I overheard in rehearsal and already sound quite persuasive.

2 March 2009

This morning I immersed myself in early period John Adams, listening to the two versions of Shaker Loops back-to-back and watching an old documentary about Harmonium.

It’s funny to look back to the early 80’s and see what an institution Adams had already become. The filmmakers tried desperately to romanticize him and his music, and he seemed to handle it well, posing for the camera in picturesque situations, composing in his impeccable mountain cabin or gazing thoughtfully over the San Francisco bay. Pretty banal stuff, though Adams did have some interesting things to say, including his own handy definition of Minimalism: “A vast reiteration of smaller units to create a larger architecture”. He plays some licks from Nixon in China on his wonderful old clavinova to demonstrate this. It was also fun to see the 1980’s choristers struggle with Harmonium’s hemiola rhythms, which sound so staid now, precisely because Adams and others have reiterated those gestures to the point of cliché.

The piece itself, though, is still resoundingly successful. The epic crescendo/accelerando into “Wild Nights” must have sounded incredibly daring in 1982, and it still never fails to move me. Though it strikes me as a subversion of the poem, not to mention a manipulation of the audience, to emphasize the line “were I with thee” as much as Adams does by repeating it dal niente in the final section. It makes the ending sadder and more poignant, but is it true to the meaning of the text? I suppose that’s why so many composers set Emily Dickinson, because she can’t very well complain.

Though the original septet version used a quasi-aleatoric system of looped phrases and cues, Shaker Loops is always heard today in its later through-composed scoring. (I love looking at weird, unknown versions of familiar pieces, seeing how composers thought differently about their own music as it continued to evolve.) That said, in the way it sounds, the original version resembles the written-out version closely. The entire middle of the piece, including the entire second and most of the third movements, has no indeterminate notation whatsoever. It’s as if Adams started composing using the idea of loops, then as he became more involved with the music he was writing, abandoned the idea in favor of increased control. I suppose this was a learning experience for him, because he was progressing closer toward the type of music he has become known for. There are a few details that are lost with a massed string texture, however; for example, the trills in the second movement become more of a textural effect, whereas the solo strings articulate them as florid ornamental lines. Contrary to Adams’s own statements, I think the main advantage of the written-out version is not increased compositional control, but increased confidence on the players’ part, simply because the notation is more traditional. This results in tighter and more controlled performances, even without a conductor (but with plenty of head-banging).

26 February 2009

This is an experiment:

17 February 2009

Last week's Shy and Mighty-fest went swimmingly. The recording session was a marathon, but Dave and I got some really good takes. Right now I'm in the process of auditioning them and deciding where to make the splices. Above, Dave impersonating Alfred Brendel in my entrance hall.

1 February 2009

Back in New Haven after a fantastic few days in Miami, where New World Symphony did right by Some Connecticut Gospel. I'll post a recording soon; I can't say enough good things. NWS is a "training orchestra" founded by MTT (is that his MC name?) for players around my age to go and gain some professional experience while they plan their futures— a nice stage in-between school and career. They are in the process of getting their own Frank Gehry hall (everyone's doing it. I've commissioned a garden shed for the backyard, just need to get the zoning cleared up). I got to meet some cool older-kid composers, including David T. Little (looking very clean-cut here) and Jeff Myers. Romanian-born Miami-based composer Daniel Manoiu rounded out a wildly diverse but very satisfying concert of Ives-inspired music.

Here are some NWS musicians doing their thing:

Left to right: Catherine Miller, Anne Lanzilotti, Ignacio Gallego, Jory Herman

Some Royal Terns (Thanks to my tern-expert brother Guthrie for the identification):

26 January 2009

Just returned from a weekend in Boston, where I witnessed a spirited evening of new-ish music courtesy of Dinosaur Annex, and had a revelatory Chinese meal courtesy of the Peach Farm. I also took lots of photographs for a class I'm starting, and was eagerly importing them when my Aperture library decided to collapse in a heap of corruption. And of course I'd already erased my camera, but hadn't backed up, so I lost them all. I was especially sorry because there was one of a tub of eels.

In the excitement over the actual content of New York Phil's season announcement, I missed that they also unveiled a totally new identity! This makes me indescribably happy. Their old logo and graphics were so generic I actually had to remind myself what they looked like— oh, right:

A swoosh. A musical staff, sure, but still trite, corporate, and completely bland, not to mention poorly executed.

The new logo is the polar opposite. The roles of the graphic and the type are reversed; now, the letterforms themselves create a sense of motion and excitement, and the red line is the anchor (like a baton! I get it). The typography is certainly unconventional (it reminds me of a circular saw blade) but I think that's kind of what the Phil needs right now— an antidote to years of staid, uninspired administration. (Take a look at some beautiful logo treatments at Pentagram's blog.)

20 January 2009

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I could really imagine being friends with him.

Also (and I'm really grateful for this level of transparency): the inaugural lunch menu. Mmm, a brace!

10 January 2009

Fig. 1: Dave contemplates my choice of Stone Serif.

Happy new year, rabbit rabbit, everyone. I just tore apart the most delicious döner sandwich here in Berlin, where the inimitable David Kaplan and I are re-tackling Shy and Mighty. We've been holing up at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule (whose logo actually did fool me into thinking it was a bad steakhouse) where I derive pleasure from playing long stretches of repeated minor chords while our neighbors practice Bach and Chopin.

The closest I've found to contemporary music here was watching the Philharmonic (with Mehta) rehearse Carter's Three Illusions. Who knew that even the Berlin Philharmonic struggles to keep Carter's unpredictable hockets from spinning off into oblivion? They had less trouble with Strauss and Beethoven (backing up Murray Perahia, who played with impeccable limpidness. No, really, that's actually how he played!). I just wanted a behind-the-scenes tour of their recording setup; there were something like 40 microphones hanging over the stage, which were controlled by a tech wielding a boom-box-sized remote.

I love the Berlin subway system. Somehow the lack of turnstiles makes it seem that much easier to hop on and off (passengers are instead subjected to random ticket inspections on board). There are LED displays at many stations that tell you how many minutes until the next two trains (though the older, flip-card ones are more beautiful, if not as useful). I (often) wonder if anyone at MTA reads this blog.

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