From the monthly archives:
Mark Carlson, composer, rugged individualist, and fearless vacationer, has been touring Maui while I’ved holed up in this time share in Kihue finishing a new choral piece. He slathers himself in SPF50 sunblock, puts on his LL Bean hat, and with maps in hand takes off to explore, hike, and take pictures. Here is a [...]
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“Ángel de la guarda”
Cuando más triste y solo me sentía
Queriendo llorar en el salón
La niña sentada al lado mío
De pronto la mano me tomó
Y con los ojos más negros y tristes
Que he visto jamás
Me dijo sin palabras
“No te apures, no estás solo”
“Guardian Angel”
When I felt so sad and all alone
Wanting to cry in the classroom
The [...]
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Meet the man who has written the poetry I have posted here over the past week and whose marvelously inspired words I have been setting to music. I was thrilled to find this little cache of interviews on Color In Colorado, a website that deals with bilingual children’s literature (FXA has 5 books of poetry [...]
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Despite my preference for gin martinis, my mind is open to a wide variety of alternatives: for you, not me. Here’s one guaranteed to stimulate the carnivorous appetite: the Weenie-Tini. Andrew Fenton offers an extensive guide to mastering this culinary infusion on EG Forums. For the record, in that this cocktail uses Hebrew National beef [...]
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Here is an early sampler called the Mellotron. Each sound was made by lengths of prerecorded tape on a loop, activated when a key is pressed. You’ll see the innards of the thing later in the video. The Moody Blues used one in “Nights in White Satin,” but they only used string sounds. Here you [...]
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Those that know, know.
Those that don’t, don’t.
[James Merrill to RB during a recording session.]
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“Anything following the word ’should’ is usually bullshit.”
Rev. Michael Lafferty
[I guess this means we shouldn't say "should."]
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I have always preferred to write songs and choral pieces in my own language. Being an American, that means English, American English. As of this point, most of my performances are in English speaking countries and musically communicating in the home language just makes sense. I’m not convinced that anyone knows what is really being [...]
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Regular RBW blog commenter Danny McMahon (aka Fairyboy69) translated an article that appeared in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (Aug. 18, 2006) and posted it on rutopia, one of the Rufus Wainwright bulletin boards. The article gives us a peak into Rufus’s new album, as yet untitled, it is NOT the Judy Garland show, and Neil Tennant, [...]
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While I take breaks from composing, I like to do Sudoku puzzles, the 9 by 9 number placement puzzle invented by the Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler (1707 – 83) and named by someone in Japan, meaning “single number.” I haven’t had this much fun since I made 12-tone matrices back when I tried to be [...]
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