From the monthly archives:
Mark and Yael stayed with us this past week. What a joy to have two marvelous musicians in the house. Mark is one of the planet’s great violinists, and his (younger) wife is a marvelous pianist. Both on the faculty of University of Indiana at Bloomington, they were in town for a concert and climaxed [...]
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Check this out: here is a robot made by Takanishi Laboratories made to play the flute. S/He even has lungs. And lips, if you can call them that. And, well, there are all these other robot parts that if you are in the in-crowd in robotsville, you know what they mean (”5-DOF” means lips in [...]
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We have a wooden trellis over a porch in our backyard, supported by 4″ by 4″ wooden poles. Over the years, our neighborhood carpenter bees have decided that our wood is the tastiest and have chewed tunnels in the support poles. The whole structure is starting to sway and is becoming unstable. I’ve tried various [...]
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Rebecca and David invited us to the Beverly Hills Country Club today. A great brunch spread and a lovely visit. Cameron and Margie were also there. Even though most of us are artists of one kind or another, we talked about fitness, comparing yoga to Pilates, the value of aerobic exercise, and dogs. Our dogs [...]
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A new composition by Prof Berlioz!
My dear Rufus,
Thank you for the postcard from Berlin. I’m happy to hear that you are happy and healthy and musically productive.
I have something I would like you to become extremely sensitive to. I want you to start paying attention to counter-melodies. You already have a great gift for melody, [...]
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I am up for a promotion at UCLA. Think of it as an academic ladder: Assistant Professors have four steps at 2 years each; promotion to Associate Professor grants tenure and it has three steps of 2 years each; promotion to Professor is a big deal and it has nine steps, usually 3 years each. [...]
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Composer Jean Sibelius quit composing after he
had to quit smoking (ordered by his doctor)
had to quit drinking (ditto)
was supported by his country for the rest of his life
Which one was the constipator I wonder? Could he not compose without his cigars? Or did he have to be drunk or slightly so to visit his muse? [...]
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A new online program promises to “show” us the shape of music. We have graduate students do this in seminars to map out the structure of (classical) music, and have always found it an interesting tool. The program is called “The Shape of Sound” and has a peculiar library ranging from Boulez and Stockhausen to [...]
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As I walked into work yesterday, I saw that a dove had flown into a window and left his imprint on the glass. I took this picture with my cell phone so I couldn’t get the detail, but i could see his eyes, details in his beak. It was sad to think it may have [...]
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Last night I went to our local Virgin Megastore (Sunset and Laurel) and was saddened to see it empty. I walked into the book store––shelves of great looking books all looking at me saying BUY ME! BUY ME! And I was the only one there. And I didn’t buy anything. I sneaked out feeling [...]
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