My father has gotten back in touch with the photographer he was some 40 years ago (I forgot to tell you, he earned his living as a Methodist, and later, United Church of Christ minister). I highly recommend his photoblog which consists of exactly one photo a day: a nice amount for this information overload [...]
Hats off to Clint Eastwood’s brave production, STRAIGHT NO CHASER(1988), about jazz musician Thelonius Monk. After watching this, I realize that Thelonius is as important as Schoenberg or Webern in terms of modernist composers.
It’s just he always has a rhythm section going so classical snobs can never truly accept him as an equal to [...]
One of the “joys” or habits many of us newspaper readers have is reading the obits, learning of someone’s passing, and offering up a personal sigh of appreciation of how they touched our lives. One such man showed up in today’s paper: Mahlon Clark, who died at age 84 in Los Angeles. Doesn’t sound familiar? [...]
Mark Del Vecchio
Angus plays the piano
Jim Kelly as Bacchus
[Photographs © Roger Bourland]
It was organ week for me. This past weekend I had to good fortune to meet the warm and brilliant, Manuel Rosales, the man who, with Frank Gehry, co-designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall Organ and built it. I also ran into quite a few other organ enthusiasts, builders and players at Shinji Isozaki’s exhibit [...]
When I first moved to Boston in 1976 to attend the New England Conservatory of Music, I was happy to meet a lot of composers––professional aas well as students. My teachers included William Thomas McKinley, Donald Martino, Malcom Peyton, Robert Cogan and Gunther Schuller. By our 2nd year, a group of us congealed into a [...]
Glenn Gass, my old friend from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1978, visited with his wife Julie on Friday. After spending a blessed year on Kauai, they returned to the mainland with their two boys by going directly to Disneyland (ouch). Glenn called me once and left a message from that magical city: [...]
Our plumber of the last 5 years has been Izi, and his company is called Izi does it. I have no idea what his name is in reality, Isadore I presume, but who knows. He is a short Brooklyn Jew, pudgy, is a heavy smoker, is very funny, has movie star glasses (more like goggles), [...]
I just bought and listened to the audio book of David Lynch reading his new “Catching the Big Fish.” It’s a marvelous peak inside his persona and creative process. I would have thought that he was a William Burroughs type character, or Jack Nicholson, or Dennis Hopper. You know, probably smokes a lot of dope, [...]
Christian Marclay is a remarkable sound artist who has a passion for unloved sounds (watch video). He used scratching LPs as sound makers before Hip hop was a gleam in Grand Wizard Theodore’s eye. This YouTube video gives an excellent overview of Marclay’s talent and is worth watching, regardless of your musical tastes.
Christian Marclay is [...]
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