Closing the month’s Disquiet Downstream entries on a particularly high note: Raz Mesinai’s technologically mediated chamber music. Titled “String Quartet for Four Turntables,” it’s a shifting, elegiac piece that plays with the textures and tenets of classical music. The instrumentation is the standard: two violins, one viola, one cello. But if the individual parts appear [...]
Over at artsjournal.com/gap, which is the blog of Molly Sheridan, a bunch of us are discussing the book The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty by Dave Hickey (the recent “revised and expanded” edition). We’d previously discussed Lawrence Lessig’s Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Though we’re reading in book-group mode, the [...]
From a June 12 blog entry by composer-critic Kyle Gann:
La Monte Young showed me his early string quartet in which the five movements are all almost identical, and I asked him why, and after a moment’s musing he responded, “Contrast is for people who can’t write music.”
Full post at artsjournal.com/postclassic.
He may have taken a break, but he’s returned twofold.
Over at alanmorsedavies.wordpress.com, Alan Morse Davies has begun, anew, his occasional audio postings, having uploaded today a pair, his first new additions to the site since early May.
“The Beauty of a Place When Everyone Cruel Is Still Sleeping” is an exercise in what he describes [...]
The latest Touch podcast is a nearly nine-minute recording of bees.
Not just any bees, mind you.
These are busy bees due for their concert debut.
That bee bow will be taken at nowhere less than Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, this coming September, on Sunday the 6th. The recordings, by Mike Harding (”diffused” by Chris [...]
Recommended reading, news, and so forth elsewhere:
● Jon Hassell on Diagonal Composing, the Curses of Cliché & Abundance (theaustralian.news.com.au): Thorough newspaper profile of Jon Hassell, in advance of his first visit to Australia. Notes his work with Terry Riley and La Monte Young, and his association with Brian Eno. For a musician whose work is [...]
For the next few days, three ardent listeners will join me in discussing the new album by ambient-music figure Jon Hassell, Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street, released on the ECM Records label. Most if not all of the individual tracks being discussed are streaming at last.fm. For additional information, [...]