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...]

Do internet memes perplex you? Do you just not care enough to follow (or do you need your kids to explain) that thing with the cats, that squirrel, or Kanye at the mic? Well, there's a site that will do it for you, and it will even parse the Auto-Tune trend trajectory (though admittedly the "how" does not illuminate the "why"). [via Waxy] … [Read more...]

In (finally) setting up a blog aggregator for myself a couple weeks ago, I realized how far behind I've fallen since the days when my Friday Informer deadlines kept me on a regular hunt for great online content. However, now that I am properly outfitted with a consumption method, I love finding out who is reading what and why. But it's also making me wonder: Is anyone regularly reading blogs anymore, or have they been traded in for your TweetDeck? Who ranks as the best of the bunch you are … [Read more...]

Yes, the "Painfully Honest and Epic Mobile Home Commercial" is more, um, well, more everything. [via BoingBoing] But the one designed by Rhett and Link of "I Love Local Commercials" for Ray's Midbell Music of Sioux City, Iowa, capitalizing on the "band rap", is awkwardly poignant as well. Now, I hear the LA Phil has the community cultural advertising thing down, but some other towns might need a hand in the marketing department. I'm not sure if these guys are open to such a project, but just … [Read more...]

Okay, admittedly this is a Gap commercial, of all things, and extrapolating large life lessons from it might be a little lame and more than a bit misguided, but it got me thinking about the role of art--as in: is the ultimate goal of art always to shake up our private worlds and ways of experiencing things, to let us mentally knock over a mannequin in the middle of a department store, so to say? And what about our arts institutions? Do we need them to be the staunch, quiet pillars and white … [Read more...]

Some years ago Carnegie Hall asked me to draft a composer profile/program note for Idiot Divine, a solo show of Rinde Eckert's they were putting up in Zankel Hall. I didn't know much about Eckert's work before preparing for our quick interview, but I remembered that phone call for a long while afterward both because of what he had to say and the fact that he could be so philosophical with a phone in one hand and a spatula in the other (he was simultaneously chatting about theatrical devices and … [Read more...]