News from the music blogosphere

Here are a few short bits from some of my favorite music blogs. You can always visit my link blog to see all the stories (both music and non-music related) that I’ve been checking out:

• Arts as Background Noise – This interesting post from Butts in Seats discusses criteria for supporting arts-friendly politicians. Interesting musings.

• Yep, Video Games Are Still Big for Classical Music – Drew McManus discovers Chopin being used in promos for Halo 3, and shares a great old Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny cartoon. Incidentally, I wrote a story about Bugs Bunny earlier this year!

• New World Symphony webcast this Saturday – From the dramatically different climate of Calgary, Canada, Calgary Philharmonic bassist Matt Heller lets folks know about the second webcast from his former orchestra. Now, if only they would put it out as a podcast…

• Paying Attention – Elaine Fine shares some thought provoking observations about the challenges of getting her community college music appreciation students to pay attention–really pay attention–to the subtleties and nuances of art music.

• Glass Opera – Patty from oboeinsight (which recently had a great new redesign) has been doing a lot of playing recently in SF Bay Area ensembles as well as checking out some San Francisco Opera performances, and she contrasts her perspectives on their recent production Appomattox with what has been written in the local papers.

• Building a Regular Practice Schedule – The Collaborative Piano Blog has been putting out a great series on developing a consistent practice schedule. Very well-written, and full of useful information. Long-time readers checking out this blog may notice a lot of similarities with their layout and the blog layout that we had here on the bass blog about a year ago.