Best of the ‘Viols in Our Schools’ GambaCast – CEMC – Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677) – 3 Songs
Best of the ‘Viols in Our Schools’ GambaCast – CEMC – Bartoloméo da Selma y Salaverde (c.1580-c.1638) – Fantasia IX
Best of the Viols in Our Schools GambaCast – CEMC – Alessandro Grandi (1586-1630) – In lectulo meo
Best of the Viols in Our Schools GambaCast – CEMC – Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) – Quel sguardo sdegnosetto
What soundtrack would you create for this?
One of the activities that happened during my student teaching last year was a composition assignment that I thought particularly cool (my cooperating teacher’s idea–not mine): collectively create a soundtrack for what may quite possibly be the most awesome scene ever set down on film. What would you compose as a soundtrack for this flick?
Master class with Rami Solomonow
One of the many hats I wear these days is as podcast coordinator for the wonderful Midwest Young Artists youth music organization here in the north suburbs of Chicago. Their podcast can be found at WMYA.FM. The following episode featuring DePaul University viola professor Rami Solomonow was released in the fall of 2008, and I thought that bass blog folks might be interested in this as well–it’s a great primer on bow concepts and should prove to be interesting to those interested in a different perspective about tone production on stringed instruments.
Leonard Cohen video interview
As I was taking care of some video upload tasks using blip.tv, the awesome service that I’ve used for the last few years as my one-stop for my online video projects, I stumbled upon this interview with Leonard Cohen, one of my favorite songwriters, done by Q TV from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (the real CBC, despite my podcast abbreviations to the contrary). Enjoy!
Merlin Mann on creativity
Merlin Mann is one of my favorite tech personalities–he’s incredibly funny and exactly what I think of when I envision a creative individual. Here’s his chat (around 27 minutes) from the 2009 Macworld Pulse event on creative processes:
SK Thoth and the American Classical music experience
Fall of 2008 saw me starting and abandoning various projects due to a crippling bus schedule. The following post is one of those aborted attempts. I sat down in (I think) October one night and watched, captivated, Sarah Kernochan’s documentary on Thoth, a street performer that, though appearing on first glance to be either insane or part of some intricate gag, actually reveals himself as some sort of maverick musical visionary, putting entire operas from his own powerful fantasy world, playing the part of orchestra, conductor, dancer, and singer.
The way the world looks at Thoth seems to be an extremely heightened version of how all musicians feel from time to time, cast out from regular society, some sort of bizarre sideshow to the “regular” world, and compelled at any cost to create, imagine, and evolve at any cost.
Am I about to don a loin cloth and start singing falsetto arias of my own design under a bridge here in Evanston? Not likely. I challenge, however, and musicians out there (especially freelance musicians!) to watch this video and not identify, even just a little bit, with Thoth’s place in the world:
The Fascination of Thoth
Talk about layers upon layers of intrigue! When you first witness Thoth perform, you likely had the same reaction as the onlookers in Central Park. If you’re like me, however, all the pieces of the puzzle that is Thoth (who is this guy and why is he playing violin and dancing in a loincloth while singing falsetto, for example) start to come together. No wonder Ms. Kernochan chose him as the subject for a documentary!
What fascinates me most about Thoth is how he came from a classical music background and, never fitting into mainstream society, created a vivid and full-scope imaginative subuniverse, with maps of the land that makes up this world and a mythology of its own. Taking this self-generated mythology, he crafts intricate long-form operatic works and enacts the whole story himself.
But Wait… He’s One of Us!
Thoth’s mother was a professional timpanist, performing for many years with the New York City Opera and in a short and ill-fated stint with the San Francisco Symphony. Learning this about Thoth’s mother helped me to understand the underpinnings of what I was watching. Suddenly all the voices and dramatic dances and gestures made sense–Thoth was performing an opera, just like his mother did for so many years, only in his opera he served as soprano, baritone, orchestra, librettist, and composer, with a hefty dose of performance art thrown in for good measure.
His musical upringing and training on the violin serves as the foundation for his sprawling compositions, which are simultaneously bizarre and captivating, goofy and profound, and filled with layer upon layer of intrigue. Strange? You bet. But isn’t Thoth really doing–to an extreme, to be sure, but doing nevertheless–exactly what musicians for countless generations have been doing: pushing the boundaries of creative expression using any and all tools at their disposal, and persevering despite an indifferent or hostile public?
The image from this documentary that sticks in my mind the most is Thoth playing to speed walking Wall Street workers. Talk about a perfect contrast between artist and public! I’d love to blow up a frame of that scene and put it up on my studio wall. I’d title it “Life of a Musician” or something like that.
Tan Dun working with London Symphony
Though this “rehearsal” is obviously for the benefit of the camera more than the players, it is an excellent window into the details behind this piece. I really hope that people outside of the tiny world of classical music are checking this out, and that this marvelous project is finding a wider audience.
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Recent Podcasts- CBC 124: ISB 2009 Impressions
- CBC 123: Klauss Stoll interview
- Guy Tuneh performs at 2009 Bodenseefestival
- CBC 122: Music School Choices
- CBC 121: Ben Jensen performance
- CBC 120: Ed Barker interview
- CBC 119: David Cardon and the Unfortunate Incident
- CBC 118: Jon Burr interview
- CBC 117: Mark Morton interview 2
- Audio from my appearance at Chicago Music Commission panel
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