From the monthly archives:
On a stormy morning in LA, and with summer right around the corner it seemed like a morning for Keith Jarrett. Rain and tornadoes in late May in LA? Hmm, did another chunk of ice fall off Antarctica?
Keith Jarrett Mandala Hannover 1976Uploaded by jorge_ro
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A new responsibility has now been put on my plate as a teacher of composition. Now that UCLA has an MA in Visual Media and I am part of the faculty, we train young film composers. We expect them to know as much of the same things we expect of our traditional composers.
Part of [...]
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The term polyphony means many voices and is traditionally used in reference to a kind of musical texture where each voice has a certain amount of independence. A canon and a fugue are good examples. You heard Ketjak last week as an example of polyphony in other cultures.
Yesterday a visiting scholar spent an hour and [...]
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No, it’s not the Beatles song, it’s a new one. O is bragging about his son, Telly. Here you just get to hear the accompaniment.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
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“This Boy” (from HOMER IN CYBERSPACE)
Music by Roger Bourland
Lyrics by Mel Shapiro
(Accompaniment only)
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Last night we ran the whole show with my orchestrations. You’ll remember, the orchestra is all prerecorded by me using Apple’s LOGIC 8 software. I use a lot of electronic sounds because of the “cyberspace” aspect of the title. To balance that side of the sound, I use a huge array of stringed instruments — [...]
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Innovative “Homer in Cyberspace” breathes new life into ancient heroes
by David Chute
Getting Aphrodite Off the Ground
In the surreal virtual universe of Mel Shapiro’s “Homer in Cyberspace,” the gods of ancient Greece have been deposed, “shrink-wrapped and imprisoned” by a new race of digital/electronic deities known as the iGods.
Struggling to return home to his loyal wife [...]
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And now for something completely different. I love how, in the first transition, he slaps the lower manual to emulate a drum. He keeps WATCHING me through the whole piece, feels almost creepy.
I wonder what the history of performers playing 2 keyboards at the same time is? People around in the 1970s remember Keith [...]
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On Sunday, Daniel invited his uncle and aunt, Tita [aunt] Eden and her husband Nelson, their sons and daughters and their children to our house for the afternoon. We had a dozen kids under the age of 13 here and I have to say they were the best behaved children I’ve seen in years When [...]
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This just in from Prof Waterman. Get down, but not too much.
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In 1976, America was all excited about being 200 years old and many of its major orchestras participated in consortium commissioned works. One of those works that I loved was called “Final Alice” by David Del Tredici. In fact it wasn’t only I that loved the work, the piece got standing ovations no matter [...]
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