Miss Music Nerd Finds Fame, Fortune!

NaBloPoMo Day 31! I made it — woot!
Well, fame, at least. Sorta. You’ve gotta start somewhere!
Last fall while I was in the midst of the 30 Days Project, I was interviewed for an online publication called Michigan Women’s Forum. Since then, I’ve been checking the site periodically to see if the interview had [...]

Rhythm and the City

NaBloPoMo Day 30!
I realized recently that I really need to remedy a particular gap in my musical knowledge: I can tell when a rhythm sounds “Latin,” but I couldn’t necessarily explain the difference between a rumba, and samba, a tango and a cha-cha-cha. It’s the kind of thing where I know it when I hear [...]

A Classical Riot!

One of my favorite stories from music history concerns the audience reaction at the première of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), which was given in Paris on this day in 1913 by the Ballets Russes. (I mentioned the piece during my May Day Spring Celebration post at the beginning [...]

Happy Birthday, György!

NaBloPoMo Day 28!
I was just reading the Composers Datebook (like a good little Music Nerd ) and I noticed that today is the birthday of György Ligeti (1923-2006), one of my favorite composers. (I seem to have a fondness for Hungarian composers — I wrote about another one earlier this month!) Whether you’ve heard [...]

A Little Housekeeping

NaBloPoMo Day 27!
I found out recently that the audio hosting site I had been using isn’t working anymore. It might come back at some point, but for the moment there are licensing issues to deal with. It’s too bad, because I was hosting my own music with them, so licensing really wasn’t an issue for [...]

Memorial Day

NaBloPoMo Day 26!
It’s been a quiet Memorial Day here at McVirgo Manor. McDoc is on call at the hospital, and I puttered around the internet house as usual. I thought of going to a local parade, but then I got interested in the holiday-themed programming on my local public radio station. (As I may have [...]

Diseases of the Great Composers!

NaBloPoMo Day 25!
It’s pretty nice having one’s own in-house physician. McDoc tells me when it’s time to use my inhaler (sometimes I don’t notice I’m wheezing before he does), when I need to go to the doctor for antibiotics (it’s generally looked down upon for a doc to write prescriptions for family members) and when [...]

Search Me, vol. 2: The Word!

NaBloPoMo Day 24!
A funny search came up on my blog stats the other day. It warrants a visit from the One Word Answer Man (a concept I stole from this guy):
What is the organ word for nerd?”
Um… organist?
Seriously, if I had to rank the instruments in order of nerdiness, organ would be up [...]

Mahler’s 9th, postscript: A Little Eye Candy!

NaBloPoMo Day 23!
Not that kind of eye candy (sorry to disappoint!)
A quick post today, as I’m visiting my sister-in-law, who is due to bring another nephew into the world for me very soon!
I poked fun at the conductor yesterday, so today I’ll atone by showing some good conductor shots. First, the [...]

Mahler’s 9th, part 3: Getting Gotten

NaBloPoMo Day 22!
You know, I have a confession to make: I thought it would be pretty easy to capture my experience of hearing Mahler’s 9th last Sunday; after all, it hit me like a velvet anvil — something you don’t soon forget! And I didn’t expect my review to become a series — I thought [...]