My handsome bearded brother Guthrie is a college graduate as of this past weekend. 

Coming soon to teach a fifth-grade class near you.

Invis­i­ble Cities has come and gone, like an espe­cially memo­rable thun­der­storm. The entire process made me quite grateful for my musical “family” in New York— and it truly was a “family” affair. Besides Chris, most of the Sleeping Giants were involved: Ted conducted, Jacob was the audio engineer, I played in the orches­tra and accom­pa­nied rehearsals. Laura Grey, Rob’s fiancée, designed the beau­ti­ful video projec­tions. The list goes on, and of course, everyone is connected to everyone else, as is often the case in such productions. 

The next big dish on my plate is family-oriented and locally-sourced. This is the solo concert I’m prepar­ing for Barge­mu­sic on June 9. I am trying to imbue it with a sense of “place”. Some of that is geograph­i­cal: Chris’s Hoyt-Scher­mer­horn is a noctur­nal rumi­na­tion on that nearby infamous subway transfer; Jacob’s new Clifton Gates refers both to my street address and my own predilec­tion for Phrygian Gates (by the way: Jacob’s piece makes use of actual elec­tronic gating, courtesy of Max/MSP. I know, we’re bleeding-edge).

Barge­mu­sic is first and foremost a stalwart presen­ter clas­si­cal chamber music. Ted’s piece, also brand new, is called Parlor Diplo­macy, and is Ted’s take on one of my favorite post-modern tropes: taking a small fragment of “clas­si­cal music” and using it as the basis for a piece in one’s own style (here it’s Mozart and Brahms, at least in the parts I have so far). This will be the program’s nod to all the chamber musi­cians who frequent the Barge. 

Two slightly older pieces round out the show: Derek John­son’s Infinity Plunge, filling (nay, over­flow­ing) the role of virtuoso barn-burner, and Ingram Marshal­l’s Authen­tic Presence, which is— how to say it? Really Ingram‑y, that is to say, epic and beautiful. 

Of course, we’ll all be afloat, so what can I possibly do but play my newest piano piece, At the River?

Some­thing funny has happened over the past couple of months: Crashing Through Fences has taken off. A small flood of people have ordered the score and sched­uled perfor­mances. If you’re one of those people, or are planning to become one, I’m going to come right out and ask: why? This is possibly, no defi­nitely, my most annoying piece. Piccolo and glock­en­spiel— I mean, are you kidding? Is this the reason my more expe­di­ence-minded compo­si­tion teachers told us to write percus­sion music? Do percus­sion­ists and flutists date each other a lot? I’m not complain­ing, in fact I’m thrilled— just a bit confused.

Found out at the last minute that I’ll be perform­ing live on today’s WNYC Sound­check with John Schaefer. You can listen at 2:00 PM on 93.9 FM in the NYC area, or listen online here. Preced­ing me is an up-and-coming young composer by the name of Steve Reich.

• 1. Top 4 composers under 1000 
• 2. Top 1000 composers under 4 
• 3. Top 80 keys on the piano 
• 4. Top 0.4 21^st-century composers (spoiler: Andrew Norman’s head and neck) 
• 5. Top 1 musical chair under my butt 

I couldn’t make it to the LCD Soundsys­tem Lebewohl show at Madison Square Garden last night, neither could I watch the webcast. Right now, in fact, I’m sitting in the South­west terminal at Houston Hobby, waiting for the early flight back to LGA because some of us just can’t keep our roofs on.

Twitter is great in these inde­ter­mi­nate waiting periods that occupy a great deal of one’s life. Except nobody I know is tweeting at this hour, except for Erik Spiek­er­mann. Somehow I stumbled on the #LCDMSG tag, which people have cleverly used to mark their tweets relating to the afore­men­tioned LCD Soundsys­tem concert. This as-it-happens crowd­sourc­ing is one of the things Twitter is supposed to be used for, and about which much self-congrat­u­la­tory nonsense has been spouted (along the lines of, “Who needs a $450/year NYT subscrip­tion when we can watch events unfold on Twitter?”) 

In reality, Twitter falls laugh­ably short. I tapped on #LCDMSG and found about three things, tweeted and re-tweeted in a never-ending feedback loop: “OMG #LCDMSG was soooo awesome” (wow, you should be a music critic), some­thing about a person called Patrick Ewing about which I do not care and which may or may not be a joke, and finally, messages from spam-bots which had nothing whatever to do with LCD or MSG but noticed that it was a popular tag and wanted (if spam-bots are capable of want) to sell Viagra to people. 

I know for certain of one friend who was in atten­dance, and I’ll be inter­ested to talk about the show when I next see him (he wasn’t consid­er­ate enough to tweet; how rude). That’s the conun­drum; I’m not too inter­ested in the subjec­tive expe­ri­ences of strangers, even if the expe­ri­ences them­selves are ones I’m inter­ested in. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the entire “hashtag” feature is pretty useless; most of my friends subvert the tags into a self-conscious form of parody, using them to edito­ri­al­ize their own thoughts in ways that, though often clever and funny, would be prepos­ter­ous to search for. 

Of course, humor is the saving grace of Twitter, that perfectly flippant medium. 

I’m at 35,000 feet now, roof is holding strong. Looking good, Southwest!

Last week, five out of six Sleeping Giants gathered in Rob Honstein’s lovely Park Slope living room to record our first podcast, courtesy of Sopho­cles Papavasilopou­los. I spelled that right the first try. We had a grand time and only had to cut out a couple of blatantly offen­sive remarks. Both were attrib­uted to Chris. (It is still super spicy though.) Ted does most of the swearing. Andrew was too cool busy writing a theremin concerto, but he’s there in spirit. Listen up now. 

Composers at Play: Sleeping Giant

An unex­pected surprise showed up in my inbox a few weeks ago: what appeared to be an album of elec­tronic music by my friend, composer/bassoonist Brad Balliett. Brad’s one of the more unique musical figures in New York; I’ve known him, and his iden­ti­cal twin, Doug, since high school. The contra­dic­tion inherent in that last sentence should tell you some­thing. They were the guys who knew how to make a bong out of an apple, and did so. MATA and Metrop­o­lis Ensemble are present­ing their “hip-hop retelling” of Stravin­sky’s The Rake’s Progress in May. 

So I down­loaded Brad’s album into iTunes. 10 tracks (thought I), that’s a nice round number. E flat minor, that’s a nice key to start some­thing in. OH HEY, this sounds familiar. Yes, Brad had indeed remixed all of Shy and Mighty. I got a huge kick out of listen­ing to his take on it; the first track, Anten­noid, makes a rather convinc­ing case: 

Brad Balliett/Timo Andres: Anten­noid

I guess every Steve Reich “tribute” deserves its own Reich (Remixed) tribute! Download the entire thing at Brad’s site.

Had a quiet moment at the Andres Bakery on Saturday so I decided to “lay down” some “tracks” i.e. build a national high-speed rail system record my new piano piece At the River. Take a listen: 

Timo Andres: At the River

I wanted this record­ing for my own purposes more than anything— I wrote At the River in such a jiffy that it was out in front of an audience before I could “flip-flop” (under a normal deadline, flip-flopping is an antic­i­pated and useful part of the process). Well, at least one person seems to have liked it.

For the visual learners amongst you, Merkin Hall recently posted a fine set of photos from Gabriel’s and my Ecstatic Music Festival show. Fun fact: Gabe and I recently discov­ered that neither of us has (yet) grad­u­ated from high school.

I was reminded of the composer/performer dichotomy last night, watching Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark. I’m of three minds about the movie, and I think this (some­times yawning) gap is at the crux of my mixed feelings. Dancer a quite self-serious attempt at a tragic movie-musical, and the heroïne (as well as focus of the camera 95% of the time) is none other than Björk. She also wrote the musical numbers. (I’m about to do that thing where I conflate a fictional char­ac­ter, Selma, with a real, live actor, which I know is sloppy of me, but I think the movie invites it.) I love me some Björk, but here’s where things fall apart for me: only Björk can pull off singing Björk’s music. Espe­cially in the context of a movie-musical going down inside her own imag­i­na­tion. The moment Peter Stormare breaks into song I just want to die, or at least check my email. Lumber­ing, repressed Scan­di­na­vian men cannot convinc­ingly sing cross-barline tuplets against an elec­tronic beat consist­ing of sampled factory noises. At least, they should not attempt to do so. 

How does this reflect on my own life expe­ri­ence? I’m not sure, as I’m neither a slightly creepy and possibly retarded lovelorn drifter or a down-on-my-luck corrupt police­man. After devoting in the past few months entirely too much time writing and perform­ing my own music, I’m shifting gears entirely to the “inter­pre­tive” side of things. I like that my various jobs go through peaks and valleys; by the time I’m done with one phase, the next feels welcome and refreshing. 

Things begin in earnest on Thursday, March 24, when I venture back to New Haven to perform the great Ingram Marshal­l’s Authen­tic Presence. The very next day, I’ll be joining vocalist Mellissa Hughes for a concert back in Brooklyn. Mellissa is a musician I’ve admired since way back in college, when I saw her perform Pierrot Lunaire, at midnight, to an over­flow­ing crowd in Branford College common room. Since then, she’s gone on to become a central and much-adored figure in the “new music scene” (whatever that is—not going to write about that just now), throwing herself into projects as both a theatri­cally wild diva and a self-effacing ensemble member. We’ll be collab­o­rat­ing on songs by three good friends— Ted Hearne, Eric Shan­field, and Gabriel Kahane.

Then it’s off to Houston for a week, where my plan is to woodshed the 300 or so pieces I’ll be playing on the 21c Lieder­abend, which is actually drei Lieder­abends, at The Kitchen. There are so many reasons to be excited about this truly epic event, includ­ing many a friendly face— ACME! David Kaplan, my pianis­tic partner-in-crime! Mellissa, Ted, and Gabe again! The quantity of music is just over­whelm­ing, though I’m espe­cially looking forward to playing Greg Spears’s ravish­ing settings of Wilfred Owen poems, Ted’s Is it Dirty?, Julia Wolfe’s Carbon Copy Building, and Phil Kline’s Zippo Songs (another college favorite). 

OK, that was a whole bunch of plugging. I apol­o­gize; it’s because I haven’t written here for weeks. Again: peaks and valleys. Speaking of which, you are probably going to want some gears for those: 

Shiny, shiny pants.

It’s true, I bought another bike last time I was in Houston. It’s a beau­ti­ful, chroméd Schwinn Super Le Tour 12.2 from 1978. And yes, those shift levers are down­right rococo. I’m looking forward to upgrad­ing it to my satis­fac­tion— new tires, saddle, pedals, and bar tape to start with. I just have to remember not to look down at the thing when I’m riding under the Texas sun.