I haven’t played any Rufus Wainwright on the piano for a long time. I decided to sit down and play along with him, so these are the songs I’ll be playing tonight in my private concert. Sing along if ya like! (It’s in alphabetical order, but still makes a interesting playlist.)
Another one of my all time favorite songs is “NSU” by Cream, meaning Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, and a lot of drugs. I loved Cream. The metric/time world of NSU is great fun, much like the opening of Rufus Wainwright’s “Movies of Myself” where the opening figure has very little to do with […]
Some of us charge large hourly wages for our services. Lawyers, therapists, personal trainers, consultants, salaried employees and so on. I guess I’m one of those people. It occurred to me tonight while I was playing TUG with the dogs –– what are my hourly wages for playing with my dogs? $250 an hour? $500 […]
Sad, sad, sad. So much for Mr Robinson’s advice to young Benjamin in “Mrs Robinson.”
Think twice about tossing plastic “into the garbage.”
When I compose large vocal works (e.g “Hidden Legacies,” “Letters to the Future,” “Flashpoint/Stonewall,” “Rosarium,” “The Crocodile’s Christmas Ball,” and now “Home in Cyberspace,” friends who come to dinner are often corralled into my studio and made to listen to me sing whatever I’m working on. This is invaluable to me as I can see […]
This is another in a series of songs that I heard driving down the street in LA listening to KCRW and a song came on that nearly made my have an accident. This one is the formerly very young and cool artist, now older and more mature Fiona Apple. Her most recent album (2007) is […]
One of my favorite songs of all time is Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” here done with a video fantasy POV rather than IH performing it live, which she can do quite beautifully. When I first heard this song, I was driving home in LA, listening to KCRW and this came on. I nearly had […]
My colleague Vladimir Chernov went home Christmas, but he didn’t tell me he was going to do THIS for a New Years Gala on Russian TV-Culture.
[Thanks to Mona Lands]
I find it alternately terrifying and comforting that the whole physical planet, along with the complete works of Shakespeare and Mozart, will someday be burned up by the sun and gone forever. It served its purpose for this planet over this period of time, and now, BLAM! gone in a flash. There is no guarantee […]
I am beginning to think about teaching a course on counterpoint in the spring quarter. Our undergraduates are required to take two quarters of it, the first being traditional modal and tonal counterpoint (roughly Renaissance and Baroque counterpoint, for non-musicians, think Palestrina and Bach), and the second quarter was a kind of counterpoint after that […]
As I get older and realize how much I’ve lived through already — at the ripe old age of 55 — I realize and appreciate how much my elders have lived through. I think of my parents who were born in the late 1920s: they have lived through the 1930s, the 1940s, and the 1950s, […]
Daniel found this great video that features Stephen Sondheim teaching some well meaning young singers from Guildhall School one of our favorite songs, “(Not) getting married” from COMPANY. This is a fun clip to see Sondheim’s coaching on the song.
This performance may leave you wanting to hear a better performance. Here’s one by Carol Burnett. […]
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