October = unseeable baseball + snow + music composition

For the last four years or so, October means three things:

1) it will start snowing (usually at the most inopportune time possible)

2) it will be a struggle to watch postseason baseball (I don't have a TV and my internet is shady at best)

3) i will be working extremely hard on music

Today all three of the aforementioned concepts are in play:  I missed the Royals/Athletics game last night (which seemed like it was a doozy), I've just now begun serious work on my dissertation composition, and it is snowing!

So, hello October, let's do this.

Here are the rules of engagement for my dissertation piece:

1) the orchestra only has 2 horns
2) it must use electronics (my own rule)
3) it will be read on January 8th
4) it has to be a an original contribution to human knowledge
5) I will most likely conduct the orchestra

One of these five tenets is not like the other... namely number 4.  Writing a piece with only 2 horns can be overcome, especially with the use of electronics.  Printing and laying out parts by Jan. 8th is no big deal either.  My conducting chops are OK and I'm looking forward to addressing the creative and technical concerns with integrating electronics into a full orchestra.

It's just this whole #4 issue that I keep coming back too.

And so, after a couple weeks of procontemplating (procrastinating by contemplating), I've decided that I just need to write what I'm going to write and hope that #4 works out.  I think any more thought than that on the issue and I'm doomed to writing something potentially insincere.  Being true to yourself may seem like the obvious thing to do from outside the process of working on a dissertation, but inside the process, believe me it is much more complex here in the thick of it.

For example some days my thought process is something like this:

If I write x kind of piece, people will be able to write about it easily, if I write y music, it will win competitions, if I write a z piece, it will fit in with z crowd and they have contacts in Denmark who would want to play it, if I write an xyz piece, then everyone will love it and it will receive it's Danish premiere right?

This kind of thinking can certainly place artistic sincerity into the category of a liability.  Those three points really have to do with achieving some sort of success, and possibly building a kind of career.  Success and career are certainly important, but if I've learned anything in my life it is that you can in fact be trapped by your success and or your career.  For me, it was OK because I was able to continue my artistic pursuits while running a successful music business, but in this case, if my creative work is going to essentially be my research, then writing something disingenuous seems like the biggest mistake I could make right now.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm going to simply fall back and write exactly the same music that I've been writing for the last ten years.  The whole purpose of going through the process of focusing on one composition with an intense amount of scrutiny and inquiry is to evolve my artistic and musical thinking.  I'm just saying that I need to believe that what I'm doing has enough integrity that it will fulfill the conditions of number 4.  We'll see if I can stick to my guns throughout this process, maybe you all can help keep me honest.

That said, I've decided to blog about the process of working on my dissertation and each week I will put up a new post.  My next post is going to contain some thoughts about the ICMC-SMC conference that I attended a couple weeks ago in Greece.

-dev

the dog did it

Sitting in a burt brothers tire shop getting a new tire put on our old car. Had to put a can of green slime in the tire and bend back the rear windshield wiper to get here and hopefully our beater will pass the not very restrictive car inspection here. Half listening to the Casey Anthony trial and her father (I think) was talking about a burying a dog or some shit and my partner in crime here waiting for his audi to be fixed looks at me and says "the dog did it. I'm sure of it."

That said, I've been going to concerts lately and seen some really good music, so let's hit on that for a hot minute. May 12, Katie Porter, Dominic Lash, and Barry Chabala played some great music in a small room in brooklyn called the Presents Gallery. The set included the "Peckinpah Trios" by Antoine Beuger and some John Cage I think. It was a beautiful set and well played by all, with the simplicity of the music shining through.

I also attended the opera INNOVA by Object Collection, which was also terrific. Travis Just's score (tho everything is so interwoven it's hard to say that the music accompanies per se) and Kara Feely's direction as confidently proposed by a well rehearsed cadre of performers seemed to challenge just about everything that could be challenged and more. It's hard to go into here without citing specific examples but I highly recommend checking out any of their productions. I'm always drawn to the advance scouts of art pushing the boundaries while retaining a high degree of integrity and these guys are going to do that and they are giving no indication of doing anything but that.

I was also asked to perform on a concert with music by John Lely, Tim Parkinson, and James Saunders, which is also some good music to check out. It is nicely forward looking.

Finally I saw a set of music by Christian Wolff performed by Robert Black, Douglas Perkins, Christian Wolff, and Larry Polansky. This set of music, which included some old and some new, really gave me hope for the future.

We're heading out to Salt Lake City for the school year and I'm beginning my PhD in composition out there. It's funny that right before I'm about to leave I found this pocket of well played, well thought out music and I'm glad I found it before we got out of Dodge for a second. At the same time, I put on a bunch of concerts and ended up with a $1,000 bill in parking tickets and was pulled out of a van and harassed by the NYPD trying to return a rental timpani. Also, some guy tried to break into my car DURING THE DAY.

hmmmm....

the writing is on the wall

This Saturday featured arguably the best weather we've had all year, which meant that NYC was out in full force. June and I spent the morning on a mini-food tour of Williamsburg, stopping at Gimme Coffee, Second Stop Cafe, and Sunac with the fruits of our efforts being an egg and cheese sandwich, a coffee, and some watermelon. While June was eating her half of the egg and cheese sandwich, an older italian man stopped and said to me, "Are you just gonna let her eat that like that?" I had gaven her half the sandwich to nibble on at will. Neither June or I answered him but just kind of looked at him and he shook his head at us and moved on with his day. This was our only music-free interaction of the day.

As we continued our walk, we overheard four or five different conversations about the music industry. Getting our second coffee of the day, we overheard a lady saying, "I'm so done with the music industry." I said that I was too, talking about how I just had a project run into some bumps after months of work. She said to me "Months? Some bands are at it for years and then get cut off? And I'm the one who has to do it I run a label!" I didn't ask which label and just sort of waited awkwardly for my coffee which was funny because it was a hand-poured time intensive coffee which ended up tasting rather good even after my mini-lecture from this lady. Ariel Pink was playing on the radio which was also funny for too many reasons to go into here. The barista man said "I hear Ariel Pink sucks live, but who doesn't sound like shit live? I think that bands get too famous to quick now and show the world what they really are which is not really what they record like."

I then met up with Katie and we went to the park where there was a christian gospel music thing happening. These guys had bought a gasoline generator to power their amps and were so excited to be playing music that they couldn't stop playing. They also didn't know what they were doing, so the vocals were all crazy distorted and blown out, while the drummer was playing out of time and the bass player was playing out of key, but man they were happy. It was kind of the antithesis of the music we saw in the parade the other day and also reminded me that most of the music purchased in the US was gospel music and that Wal-Mart was the biggest retailer of music in the US. I really feel like the writing is on the wall for the music industry. Not sure what will happen, but am pretty sure it's not gonna be pretty.

While all of this christian cacophony was going on, there was a woman in modest arabic clothing (featured in my picture) who was swinging her kids on the little swings and shooting them with a super soaker which was just about as long as she was tall. I think that with the weather that we've been having lately, this was the first day that this lady could really play with her kids without nearly passing out from heat exhaustion. Maybe when her kids can take care of themselves, she can help save the music industry?

June's first film ends in a parade and free banana

The plan was not to take June to a film premiere. The plan was to go to a film premiere, maybe meet some famous people, have some drinks, maybe get famous... Instead, I ended up trying to take a 20 month old to the premiere of my brother's first film "Found." I helped him by writing some music for it. Oddly enough, I'm an award winning "director" at the film festival that his film was showing at. I put my piece Untitled 17 to some public domain film of the 1939 World's Fair and it was screened at the 2007 NYIFVF I think. It won "Best Experimental Film."

Now, here's where I help you understand where the bar is for this festival. Here's the title and blurb for the feature film shown after my brother's film:

KRACKOON

Synopsis: A Bronx town is terrorized by a crack addicted Raccoon.

However, June and I never made it to Krackoon. We will never know. Our night in Manhattan ended as soon as Ryan's film started. The first scene in "Found" actually takes place in my actual bedroom with the main character waking up. Even though I had shown June the film a number of times during the day, and even though she had told me "mommy... bed," I didn't put it together that she thought that was her mommy in the bed. It wasn't, it was an actress. As soon as the film started, June thought that something really, really, really bad had happened to her mommy since katie wasn't with me. I was mostly able to control the damage by slinking out the door, but I think that this was the most upset that I had seen the her in months. If the government wasn't so busy eating its own young, I would probably get a call from child services for this fiasco tomorrow.

Since June had a perfectly reasonable reaction to the situation we headed home after I calmed her down. When we got off the subway train, we heard a snare drum and a bass drum a couple of streets over and June was saying "Daddy. Drum." We went to check it out and it was a parade with a small band and a group of people carrying a small ornate lady statue on their shoulders. I think it was related to the Dancing of the Giglio festival here in Brooklyn. June immediately became convinced that this statue was Batman, as we have been talking about Batman lately. We listened to the band play for quite a while while also listening to the older folks in the neighborhood complain about how the parade gets smaller and smaller each year. Every time the band stopped playing and it went to just the drums, June said "More, More" and we followed the whole group for a while. I'm always struck by how soft and how loud drums are outside and how much I like watching smaller groups of people playing non-electronic music. I really feel like electric amplification has done more harm than good to music and sound over the course of time. Making something unnaturally loud is just not easy or something that should be taken casually. It's also nice to hear music being played by people who've memorized their parts. I feel like reading music is a double edged sword.

Once we were finished, I stopped in a deli and June was starting to get tired which usually shows her crankier side. This night was no exception, but in what I have found to be typical fashion in NYC, the store clerk said to fussy June "Why you so sad little mommy? You want a banana?" and gave her a banana. We went home and June ate her banana in three bites after whacking it into her high chair while screaming with joy and for some reason sticking it into her ukulele. We had a quick bath and June fell asleep in her Batman shirt.

never leave a banana in a hot NYC apartment

My wife and I accidentally left some bananas in our apartment this weekend and took off to New Jersey. There was an amazingly putrid situation that we had to deal with once we got back.

Also, I almost died on a Delta flight this week. We boarded the plane, then had to deplane because of mechanical problems. Once we reboarded, there was water leaking from the air conditioning of the plane. It was half spraying half dripping on me, giving me a sleek coating of nasty rusty water. The guy sitting next to me was named Romeo and he was quite incensed by the whole situation. Did I mention that he was a professional dancer? I think in his profession there is little margin for error and if he danced like a late leaky plane, he wouldn't be able to feed his family. He eventually flagged down a flight attendant who was so tall she almost didn't fit in the plane and got her to wipe the bubbling brown water off the ceiling. The guy who was to the right of me was reading William F. Buckley's "Men, God, and Yale" or "God, Men, and Yale" or whatever. He was upset that we were upset that the plane was leaking on us and proclaimed "Isn't it just a marvel that we can travel what used to take weeks and weeks with a horse and buggy in a couple of hours. Are you guys really complaining about a little bit of water leaking from the ceiling." Romeo said "It's just disgusting" and I said "I wouldn't take a horse and buggy across the country if it was leaking water."

The rest of the flight was without incident.