From the monthly archives:
HIDDEN LEGACIES (1992)
Music by Roger Bourland, lyrics by John Hall
Performed by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, Jon Bailey,
conductor
For men’s chorus, 4 synthesizers, bass and drums
Live performance at the Wiltern Theater, April 1992.
1. Before the storm
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
2. The Nightmare
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
3. Give us a death [...]
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Feeling nostalgic for old commercials I found this memory from my childhood, “New Country Cornflakes.” It’s a vague rip-off of Woodie Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” but tweaked just enough to not have to pay royalties.
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Check out the amazing photography of Irene Müller. I’ve always loved watching cream as it pours into rich, dark coffee, and the patterns it creates. But Irene brings a whole new realm of symmetry that was too fast for my feeble eyes to catch. Holy moly!
[Photo: © Irene Müller; used with permission]
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I discovered a marvelous resource for Los Angeles photography, taken by photographers from the LA Times from 1920 to 1990, curated by the UCLA Library Digital Collections. I typed in some composers names like Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and a few other names but didn’t come up with much. I typed in Music teachers and found this [...]
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Here is Lasse Gjertsen’s video of Italian cellist/composer Giovanni Sollima performing his own compositions “Terra Aria” and “Concerto Rotondo.”
Lasse is famous on YouTube for his human-beatbox videos like “Hyperactive,” and “Amateur.”
Part 1
So this is the project I’ve been working on for the last 5 months, and heres how part 1 of it is made:
On the [...]
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This is my favorite song of 1989. It was used by dance class instructors trying to teach their class how to shuffle (I never got it). The sexy, thrusting bass line is unforgettable, and that nasty offbeat snare slam makes me want to run to the dance floor whether I can shuffle or not.
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Tonight I entertain a serious issue: who were the most handsome (dead) composers, and who are the ugliest ones? Better yet, let’s be specific:
Who was the cutest (dead) composer?
Henry Cowell
Who were the most handsome (dead) composers in their youth?
Schubert and Paderewski
Who were the most handsome (dead) composers?
Busoni and Bernstein
Who was the geekiest young (dead) composer?
Gershwin, [...]
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“Music textiles” is a large tactile interface for playing electronic music. It was developed by Vincent Roudaud and Maurin Donneaud.
My fantasy runs wild: I imagine a new line of clothes where each piece of clothing is programmed to make a sound when touched. I could imagine my pants being a soft rain that fades [...]
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In their third quarter of music theory, my students have been working on their midterm. This time, instead of an exam, they were assigned to arrange or compose three duets (one had to have a transposing instrument). The combinations were: flute and oboe; clarinet and alto sax; trumpet and trombone (or euphonium); violin, viola, or [...]
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I was incredulous when I learned that Max Steiner wrote the theme from ” A Summer Place.” He was in his 70s when he wrote it. The chord progression [I vi ii V] was the same one used in the majority of 1950s and early 60s rock songs so he had a built in audience. [...]
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