So, I know I got a little "Bah! Humbug!"-y on the ol' Christmas tunes last week. I admit that memories of suburban shopping frenzies and endless cocktail parties have turned me a bit dark when it comes to the holiday classics. But the internet being, well, the internet, a few gems turned up to make me change my (yes, I'm going there) tune. (The holiday punch helped also.) First, the talented and adorable Pomplamoose bring us this warm and fuzzy (and non-denominational!! and good cause $$ … [Read more...]

If the NEA's 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts and the roundtable discussion that accompanied its release last week are the kind of thing that floats your boat, I tossed my two cents into that pond here. Aside from the clear need for a reassessment of the parameters we use when surveying American adults about their arts experiences (i.e. what counts as art in these times of dissolving definitions/genre hierarchies), the big, future-looking question the survey left me with was … [Read more...]

Last night there was some seriously joyous (if wordless) caroling here in Baltimore. Then, on waking late to grey and drizzly skies, the latke-making got the kibosh put on it in favor of some simple eggs and toast (interestingly the New York Times' "oatmeal buttermilk blueberry pancake" recipe was running a brisk distribution as the "most emailed article". Guess we were all looking for some form of cozy Sunday morning comfort). A little while later, however, we did get into the … [Read more...]

After watching this video for Flypt, an iPhone app that let's users remix music using some basic effects, I got to thinking again about the new ways these and other programs are bringing musical creativity into people's lives. No, it's not necessarily the equivalent of learning to play the cello, but it's flexing muscles in people that I assume most music professionals appreciate seeing toned. Doesn't the future of music seem brighter when playing music isn't simply turning on the radio but … [Read more...]

There's been quite a bit of chatter out there in response to Brian Eno's assertion in Prospect magazine that "the idea that something is uncool because it's old or foreign has left the collective consciousness." Is he out of touch with reality or is he the indisputable cool person saying we are all cool now? Oh, wait, wait, no. Not all. Seems classical music didn't jump onto this train to popularity: There are just too many styles around, and they keep mutating too fast to assume that kind of … [Read more...]

I acknowledge that this little gadget 1) caught my attention because I was procrastinating. And then very quickly 2) I was sucked in by the extreme pro and con reactions some commenters had to a video that is, at root, simply a demonstration of a very cool (if expensive) piece of technology. Though for some reason the Eigenharp has drawn a few comparisons with toys like Guitar Hero, in truth it seems like a mash-up of ideas re: real-time digital interfacing for effective music performance. … [Read more...]

Friend of Mind the Gap John Pippen sends in this photo snap from a recent visit to the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. I can't help but wonder/wish that these were someone's record bins, and that I could reach in and see what was stored under each tab. It looks like a totally reasonable filing system for music these days, and one that's way more intriguing than the usual distinctions. Yes, yes, borders between genres have been ripped up a bit. So have the fences between a lot of things. … [Read more...]

Even though the weather has turned cold, I am thinking tonight of summer camping trips to Lake Erie, and more specifically of my adopted grandfather singing old Scout songs with as much gusto as he could manage on the 15th repetition, all in the name of making the travel time go a bit faster for the eight-year-old kid (me) in the back seat. Oh, the cannibal king, with the big nose ring, fell in love with a lusty ma-a-aid. And every night, by the pale moonlight, across the bay he'd … [Read more...]

Last week I was at a dinner party when a guest to my left suggested I update my thinking about the gender gap from a glass ceiling to a window. Something on par with the views afforded by the floor-to-ceiling sashes at Jazz at Lincoln Center, perhaps? I promised I'd think it over and have been ever since, though I admit it has me troubled like a riddle I can't quite parse. Am I to take away from this visual analogy that rather than unsuspectingly hitting my head, in 2010 I can expect only to … [Read more...]

When it comes to the new music/experimental side of my iTunes library, it doesn't often happen that a once-heard track echoes in my ears as I walk the city streets. But trips outside the boundaries of my professional genre areas do sometimes adhere to my brain as if playing through phantom earbuds on endless repeat. Usually it's a line or a turn of phrase that isn't even particularly remarkable, but it will lodge--lodge, I tell you!--in my skull. Of late it wasn't Jay-Z as the new Sinatra that … [Read more...]