Posted on June 12, 2008 by virgomusic
Cross-posted at the Detroit Symphony Blog, because I am so famous and in demand!
If you’re superstitious, you probably already have your lucky rabbit’s foot or some such charm or talisman at the ready, tomorrow being Friday the 13th and all. I would say that tomorrow is a very lucky day for Detroit, though. [...]
Filed under: 20th century, classical, concerts, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, music, news | Tagged: 8 Days in June, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, New Music Detroit, Messiaen | 1 Comment »
Posted on May 28, 2008 by virgomusic
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 [...]
Filed under: 20th century, classical, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, music | Tagged: Barbara Hannigan, György Ligeti, Stanley Kubrick | No Comments »
Posted on May 27, 2008 by virgomusic
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 [...]
Filed under: 30 Days, classical, composition, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, music, new music, news | No Comments »
Posted on May 18, 2008 by virgomusic
NaBloPoMo Day 18!
This afternoon I attended the Detroit Symphony’s performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 9. I’m going to write about it, you can bet your bottom dollar, but I haven’t quite peeled myself off the ceiling yet (I hope it’s obvious that I mean that in a good way! ), so I’ll sleep [...]
Filed under: 20th century, classical, concerts, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, music, music education | Tagged: Detroit Symphony, Gustav Mahler, György Ligeti | No Comments »
Posted on May 15, 2008 by virgomusic
NaBloPoMo Day 15!
The conclusion to my little series on criticism continues to brew, so I thought in the meantime I’d post some Actual Music. Have you ever heard the quote, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”? I think I had first heard it attributed to Laurie Anderson, but apparently it’s one of those [...]
Filed under: classical, composition, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, music, new music | Tagged: Elvis Costello, Laurie Anderson | 4 Comments »
Posted on May 7, 2008 by virgomusic
NaBloPoMo Day 7!
Yesterday I recounted the story of a defining moment in my musical education, when I learned that classical composition didn’t end with the dawn of the 20th century. (I wonder what my life would’ve been like if I’d learned this earlier — then again, I was enough of a geek in high school [...]
Filed under: 20th century, classical, composition, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, music, music education | Tagged: John Swackhamer, Béla Bartók, Jorge Liderman, Andrew Imbrie | No Comments »
Posted on May 6, 2008 by virgomusic
NaBloPoMo Day 6!
In yesterday’s post, I mentioned a few of the seminal composers and musical movements that developed during the 20th century, and that, depending on your point of view, either a) advanced the field of music in exciting ways, casting off the shackles of outmoded 19th-century Romanticism and opening up whole new worlds of [...]
Filed under: 20th century, classical, composition, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, milestones, music, music education | Tagged: Béla Bartók, John Swackhamer, String Quartet, U.C. Berkeley | 3 Comments »
Posted on May 5, 2008 by virgomusic
NaBloPoMo Day 5! (Happy Cinco de Mayo! )
It probably won’t come as a surprise that I have a musical cat. His name is Piccolo, after all, and he was raised in a musical household. I knew someone once who claimed that she could not practice her guitar or recorder because her kitties couldn’t tolerate [...]
Filed under: 20th century, Piccolo, classical, composition, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, humor, music, new music | Tagged: Cats, Free Jazz, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Pierre Boulez, Theremin | 1 Comment »
Posted on May 4, 2008 by virgomusic
NaBloPoMo Day 4!
A couple of pianos from my San Diego whirlwind Theremin Concerto première tour didn’t make it into my previous KOTW post, because I shot them with my cell phone camera and hadn’t yet transferred them to the computer.
Here they are in all their lo-res glory — 2 shots of the piano at the [...]
Filed under: Keyboards of the World, Theremin Concerto, classical, composition, concerts, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, music, new music | Tagged: Del Mar Country Club | No Comments »
Posted on March 18, 2008 by virgomusic
I direct your attention to the top of the page, where you’ll find two new tabs to click on!
Listen to This! is a collection of the original pieces that I’ve posted on the blog (or elsewhere on these vast wide internets) before, conveniently corralled so you can listen to them anytime.
The Fascinating Life of a [...]
Filed under: classical, composition, contemporary classical, contemporary classical music, contemporary music, music, new music, news | No Comments »
