Apolkalypse Now! now available via iTunes!
LINK

Polkastra in the London Free Press, and on WNYC's Soundcheck.

Discovered at my aunt & uncle's place in Los Angeles, a doll that kinda maybe sort of looks like a certain someone.

My composer friends know that I'm a passionate and persnickety proponent of clear musical notation. Now, I'm taking my red pen to the streets, starting with a Notation Workshop at UNLV. Here's the pitch:

The ability to create fantastic-looking scores is an invaluable resource in the composer’s toolkit. Immaculate scores and parts reduce ambiguities, make rehearsals more effective, and result in better performances and interpretations. Succeeding as a composer certainly requires more than just beautiful notation, but taking time to perfect a score can reap benefits for years. I have edited scores for several major music publishers, and I am a composer and performer myself. In my notation workshops, I bring these experiences to students. There are three possible formats for the workshop: 1) a multimedia lecture using scores by students in attendance, 2) a series of small-group one-hour lessons, or 3) a combination of both, in which the score improvement techniques are reinforced through a second encounter. The workshops are geared toward undergraduate and graduate composers, though advanced high school-age students would find it useful as well. Participating students should choose their best pieces, so that the improved, workshopped version will show their finest work in the finest light.

I've posted a few new song demo mp3s to my music page:
Vshamru | The Robot Tango | Purple Martin's Majesty | We All Know Some Animals

Michael Chabon
from Gentlemen of the Road

ySomeone was singing. Amram heard sawed strings and a voice at once lilting and raspy -- an old man or woman -- and they followed the sound of it up a crooked lane to the top of the hill, squelching through mud that was an impasto of dirt and blood, past the fly-blown carcasses of women, children and defenders alike, some three dozen people in all, among them a crone and a babe in arms. Amram kept up a steady murmur of prayers for the souls of the butchered and his own in this grievous shambles. At the top of the hill in the archway of the main house, an eyeless old man sat on a bucket, scratching at a two-stringed gourd, warbling weird melismas on a madman’s text.

19 Jan | Golden Festival @ Good Shepherd School, NYC
25 Jan | Britten: Peter Grimes, One World Symphony, St. Ann and the Holy Trinity, Brooklyn
26 Jan | Cornelius: Sensuous Synchronized Show, Webster Hall, NYC
27 Jan | Choral Music of John Harbison, St Ignatius Episcopal Church, NYC
27 Jan | Musica Reginae, Flushing Town Hall, NYC
10 Feb | Sunday in the Park with George @ Studio 54, NYC
11 Feb | Verdi: Otello, Metropolitan Opera, NYC
15 Feb | Messiaen: Turangalila Symphonie, St Louis Symphony @ Carnegie Hall
11 Mar | Britten: Peter Grimes @ Metropolitan Opera, NYC
26 Mar | Keys to the Future (Concert II), Greenwich Music House, NYC
29 Mar | Fleet Foxes & Blitzen Trapper, Bowery Ballroom, NYC
31 Mar | Julliard Orchestra: Busoni, Bartok Piano Concerto No3, Mahler Symphony No1, Avery Fischer Hall
1 Apr | Passing Strange @ Belasco Theater, NYC
4 Apr | Smokey's Roundup, Southpaw, Brooklyn
9 May | Sybarite String Quintet at Caffe Vivaldi
14 May | South Pacific @ Beaumont Theater, NYC
15 May | Festival Chamber Music, Merkin Hall, NYC
31 May | Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis
1 Jun | Laura Metcalf & Monica Chung @ Faust Harrison Pianos, NYC
5 Jun | Da Capo Chamber Players, Merkin Hall, NYC
18 Jun | Tristan Perich @ Issue Project Room, Brooklyn
22 Jun | Alan Bishop and Richard Bishop, Knitting Factory, NYC
23 Jun | Ivan Ilic, Weill Recital Hall, NYC
2 Jul | Orchestra Baobab @ River to River Festival, NYC
16 Jul | Menachem Pressler & Eugene Drucker, Mannes School of Music, NYC
24 Jul | Boston Symphony Orchestra plays Carter, Tanglewood
25 Jul | Boston Symphony Orchestra plays Brahms, Yefim Bronfman, etc., Tanglewood
31 Jul | Chanticleer @ Seiji Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood
2 Aug | Renée Fleming et al, Eugene Onegin @ Tanglewood Music Shed
7 Aug | Private Lives @ Barrington Stage Company
13 Aug | Wilco @ Tanglewood Music Shed
24 Sep | To Paint the Earth @ 37 Arts / NYMF
27 Sep | They Might be Giants @ Le Poisson Rouge
19 Oct | Our Gobi Fossils @ Theatrelab, NYC
05 Nov | Doctor Atomic @ Metropolitan Opera
13 Nov | Monica Chung & Drew Ricciardi @ Greenwich House, NYC
15 Nov | The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument Centennial Concert @ Brooklyn Technical High School Auditorium
16 Nov | Animal Tales @ Chelsea Studios, NYC
18 Nov | Pal Joey @ Studio 54
21 Nov Sybarite Chamber Players with Mieka Paula @ DUMBO Loft concert series
30 Nov | Sybarite Chamber Players @ Bruno Walter Auditorium, NYC
04 Dec | Nellie McKay @ Le Poisson Rouge, NYC
09 Dec | Hairspray @ Neil Simon Theater
16 Dec | Gypsy @ St James Theater, NYC

CONCERTS WHERE MY MUSIC WAS PLAYED or WHERE I PLAYED MYSELF
9 Feb | Joelle Lurie at the Triad
9-11 Aug | Weill: Mahagonny @ Tanglewood
23 Oct-21 Nov | Lord Oxford Brings you the Second American Revolution, Live!
17 Nov | Noah Getz & Ann Kang @ Stella Adler School
19 Nov | Hofstra Chorale & Chamber singers @ Cathetral of the Incarnation, Garden City, NY
11 Dec | Saar Ahuvia & Stephanie Ho @ Aaron Copland School of Music, NY
...at Concordia Conservatory...
5 May | Student Chamber Music Recital
17 Jul | Musical Theater Workshops, Bronxville, NY
5-7 Dec | A Single Winter's Day
...with Gamelan Galak Tika & Ensemble Robot...
15 Jun | New Haven Green
18 Oct | EMPAC, Troy, NY
30 Oct | Berklee College of Music
22 Nov | Broad Auditorium, Cambridge, Mass.

100 scrappy mp3s to celebrate 2009. New discoveries, longtime tracks held dearly, and the in-between. LINK (393MB). Schnitzelstu:cke!

Previously: Scrap Happy 2008

For the months that don't show any activity, assume I spent them worrying about something or other.

Prelude & Fughetta fl., vln., & vcl. | student performers (January)
The In Between , solo cello (February)
White, Those That Stayed Still, SATB a capella (May)
The Animal Estates Home Buyers' Tour, children's musical (July) | Songs: Purple Martins' Majesty, Big Brown Bat, Beaver Dam!, At Least We're Eastern Mud Turtles, Awesome Possum, We All Know Some Animals / Animal Estates
Always Call Your Parents, children's musical (July) | Songs: Always Call Your Parents, Come on Over to the Old Piany, Johnny Hotstuff, The Robot Tango
A Single Winter's Day, holiday musical (September) Songs: A Winter Town in the Winter Time, It's Never the Same Without Snow, Four Seasons of Fun, Ice Pact, The Last Minute Plan, Plant a Seed, Just Adjust
Arrangements for Robert Honeywell's Lord Oxford Brings you the Second American Revolution, Live! (September)
Songs for BMI Musical Theater Workshops (ongoing)

Complete list on the music page

Once again, a list of books I read, and mostly remembered. Links go to LibraryThing (Social bookmarking! Get it?!)

Jack Kerouac: The Dharma Bums
Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise
Hunter S. Thompson: Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72
Douglas Adams: Life, the Universe and Everything (reread)
Alan Moore: V for Vendetta
Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep
Ben Mezrich: 21: Bringing Down the House
Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policeman's Union
Janna Levin: A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines
Malcom Gladwell: Blink
John Steinbeck: Travels with Charley
Jack Kerouac: On the Road
Okakura Kakuzo: The Book of Tea
H.G. Wells: The Time machine
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Ernest and Other Plays
Amy Sedaris & David Sedaris: The Book of Liz
David Mamet: Glengarry Glen Ross
Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
Roald Dahl: Tales of the Unexptected
Nathanael West: Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locusts
Eugene Ionesco: Rhinoceros (reread)
Harold Pinter: The Homecoming
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire (reread)
Walker Percy: The Moviegoer
Steve Martin: Born Standing Up
Michael Lewis: The Blind Side
Tony Kushner: Angels in America

CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Roald Dahl: The BFG
Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, ... Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out
Matthew Reinhart: Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy
C.S. Lewis: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis: The Magician's Nephew
C.S. Lewis: The Horse and His Boy
C.S. Lewis: Prince Caspian

Lincoln, NH *
New York, NY *
Alajuela, Costa Rica
Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica
La Leona, Costa Rica
Playa Samara, Costa Rica
Liberia, Costa Rica
San Jose, Costa Rica
East Northport, NY *
Mexico City, Mexico
Puebla, Mexico
Verzcruz, Mexico
Somerville, Mass. *
Boston, Mass.
Pittsfield, Mass.
Bolton Landing, NY
Montreal, Canada
Quebec City, Canada
Winsted, CT
West Hartford, CT

One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited on non-consecutive days and deserve special recognition. Up with cities!

Previously: Year in Cities 2003-2007

My favorite ASCII character has to be the pipe: |.
- It is immediately recognizable as a separator, an orthographic scythe.
- In that capacity, It is more unassuming than the forward slash /.
- It's right there on the keyboard, an underdog key, coupled with the wretched blackslash.
- It is the tallest, lankiest character on the keyboard, taller than uppercase i and even taller than the square bracket: I [ ) |
- It has a cool, monosyllabic plosive moniker.
- Why not make the pipe your favorite ASCII character, too?

I love these. James Plakovic ingeniously draws these photo-music-mosaics, painstakingly creating a mashup of rhythms and crosshatching. Skip the audio examples, since those are more of an afterthought to the expertly executed "scores."

Ursula K. Le Guin
Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness

A sentence or paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence, than by the attentive intellect.

Two passages from Okakura Kakuzo's The Book of Tea
Online version

The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup. Mankind has done worse. In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucious, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.

Continue reading "Life as a Cup of Tea" »