Look at that! Original Kronos Quartet cellist (and #Violagate White Knight) Joan Jeanrenaud is performing a concert to benefit my neighborhood library. Specifically, it’s a fundraiser to replace the somewhat dated mural on the library with a more modern piece of wall art. Of course, this being San Francisco, replacing that mural is no simple affair, and local blog, Bernalwood, has a fascinating account of the small neighborhood drama that such an endeavor engenders.
I think I knew that JJ was a fellow Bernal Heights resident, but I don’t think I’ve seen her around much in the neighborhood. Maybe because I spend too much time in the Mission…
Opera On Tap’s classical opera in casual settings is exactly the sort of non-traditional presentation that Classical Revolution has been doing with chamber music. There are certainly many fine singers in this town and I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the group to start up something out here. I’ve been to a couple of events in NY (mostly through my friend Natalie Wilson as well as their Opera Grows in Brooklyn co-productions with American Opera Projects) and they will be a welcome addition to the music scene here.
They need to have the input audio be a solo piano piece to see what happens. First some Mozart, then some Debussy. Now THAT would be cool.
I’m curious how much the transformation considers the audio spectrum of the output device. What if this was instead driving a sampler? You’d expect a different midi result depending on the samples chosen.
Generating the audio acoustically is a big part of the neat factor though. It reminds me of the coolest thing I ever saw a SIGGRAPH, the Wooden Mirror. It’s literally a low resolution monochromatic display device of wooden pixels. Each square pixel has a servo attached and it would tilt up or down to reflect the right about of light.
This could easily be applied to classical music with just a bit of media synergy. Imagine a couple finishing a candle lit dinner, staring into each other’s eyes:
“Thanks for the dinner. The chicken was delicious.”
“It’s the least I could do after you saved my family’s fortune. You’ve become so much more to me than just another corporate lawyer.”
“Well. It’s all I can do. I didn’t want to see another mom and pop surgery facility put out of business by the big medical corporations. And you’re much more to me than just another beautiful brain surgeon. Say… what’s this music playing?”
“It’s Hilary Hahn’s new recording of the Higdon and Tchaikovsky concertos with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Jennifer Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize for this piece. It’s available on iTunes and Amazon.”
“It’s so… intense. Passionate. I didn’t think classical music could make me feel like this.”
“The San Francisco Chronicle called the concerto a knockout.”
“That makes two knockouts in the room…”
Music swells. Close up on suggestive looks. Fade to black…
My fellow singing waiterMark Hernandez notified me (and all his other Facebook friends) of this cutting “dark bio” from regional opera performer Robert Orth:
While it’s tongue in cheek (and damn funny) it offers an honest glance into the not-so-glamorous life of most working musicians that’s much more common than the still-not-as-glamorous-as-you-might-think lives of the brand name soloists in the classical music world. Consider the countless hours of practice and numbers of auditions Mr Orth had to endure to get to even this level, then realize how many fail to even get this far, and you can see why any father worth his salt would encourage alternative means of getting by.
Although this will certainly perpetuate the myth that I am obsessed with Hilary Hahn (not an ounce of truth to it), this is just too funny not to post.
This is kinda neat. One of the main musical gestures in the score of Inception is derived from an actual plot point in the film.
Neat! Cool! I love it!
But is it hearable? I mean, now that it’s been pointed out and delivered via the viral web you can hear it, and SOMEONE must have heard it to first point it out, but would anyone hear it on a first, third, or twentieth listen? And if it’s not hearable, does it even matter as a theatrical gesture?
That could be asked of a many musical ideas. While it might require some amount of indoctrination to follow musical relationships in Mozart or Beethoven, there’s no doubt that those relationships are observable and create some sort of meaning. Can any amount of training make the intricate and technical transformations and relationships of serial music hearable without following along in a heavily marked up score? What about the little games that composers would sometimes play, spelling out names with pitches? There’s no way anyone could hear that.
It seems that there are two flavors of transformation, the transformation that is purely part of the compositional process, part of the mental game the composer plays to create a satisfying piece. It may have meaning to the composer, but it requires some extra-musical information or very careful analysis to be observed. Then there is the transformation that is designed to be followed and tracked by the astute listener, to give meaning and structure to a piece.
In Zimmer’s case with Inception, there may be parts of the score that encourage the listener to hear this relationship between the doom gesture and the Piaf tune, all it would take is one passage that presents one the themes speeding up or slowing down into the other and all would become clear. But without that breadcrumb somewhere in the score, I suspect that under normal listening that relationship would remain unobserved and, therefore, meaningless.
When measuring success, if you haven’t yet inspired a YouTube parody, you’re probably an also-ran. When you’re REALLY successful, you become a template for parodying other things. That would make Guitar Hero pretty successful.
The earliest Guitar Hero parody I know of was forwarded to me by the internetally omniscient non-aardvark Curtis Chen (who runs the very worth your time snout.org). The gag is even funnier if you’re familiar with the More Cowbell skit on SNL.
While not exactly a YouTube parody, the Onion had it’s own take on the Guitar Hero phenomenon with their report of lackluster sales for Sousaphone Hero. I love the idea of 135 virtual sousaphone players competing in Marching Band mode, and any brass player will sympathize with the need to keep the controller’s spit valve drained.
And most recently, we have the world cup edition: Vuvuzela Hero. Well played, sir, well played.
I wrote last week lamenting how Guitar Hero provides a quick fix that discourages people from actually learning how to play an instrument (although as several friends have pointed out, the new Rock Band 3 that is scheduled to ship this winter includes a real Fender guitar and pro mode that matches ALL the real notes!)
On the other hand, it certainly exposes a generation to music that they may never have paid attention to otherwise, and in such an interactive and engaging way that it actually becomes their music. I’m thrilled that my younger cousins have been exposed to the staples of my college experience Jane’s Addiction, Nirvana, and Nine Inch Nails, as well as the staples of my high school experience The Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones.
But that’s only part of my youth. What about the rest of my high school experience, The Stravinsky, The Bartok, and The Schoenberg?
While I don’t expect to see a Guitar Hero version of Bartok’s String Quartets or Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex any time soon, why not a Guitar Hero version of Reich’s Electric Counterpoint?
It turns out that the new music supergroup Bang On A Can felt similarly. As covered on Amanda Ameer’s blog Life’s A Pitch, there are now three Rock Band tracks available so you can play along with the polyrhythmic minimalist supergroup and become a Modern Music Hero.
Yo Shakespere – Michael Gordon
Shadowbang – Evan Ziporyn
Pretty catch stuff,. If only it was notated so you could keep track of the downbeat it would be a lot easier to play. This scrolling note thing is just a pain in the butt.
The mechanism of Rock Band seems to lend itself well to minimalism. Serial work may not be quite as effective. You can only generate so much material out of five-tone rows…
Brian M. Rosen loves music and theater and wants you to love music and theater too (especially if it happens to be music or theater that he's written). Read about the stuff he likes and why he likes it.
