Out of the Millions Available

Composer-video artist Betsey Biggs, currently completing graduate work at Princeton, presented some lovely work at the Sacramento State Festival I returned from last week. Her latest piece, Ton Yam I, was based nostalgically on the idea of California, and used as sound material only slowed, looped, and altered samples from the Beach Boys' song "God Only Knows." (The title read backward makes the point.) More bloggable is a Morton Feldman anecdote she mentioned in her talk that I hadn't heard before. It seems that one of his assignments was to send a student composer out with one task for the week: to come back with one perfect chord.

On an unrelated note, the knee surgery I endured yesterday put a miraculous end to the pain I've been suffering from a torn cartilage for the last month and a half, and also hopefully from the perception-fogging effects of the accompanying pain medication. This has no relevance to the blog, but if you've been trying to contact me for any practical purpose lately and I seemed more than usually recalcitrant, it may be because I was operating at about 50% efficiency. (I normally operate at about 60%.) I look forward to the world coming back into focus. I guess.

November 18, 2008 8:42 AM | |

Categories:

Sites To See

Postclassic Radio! - Kyle Gann's internet radio station that accompanies the blog; see the playlist at kylegann.com

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer

Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by PostClassic published on November 18, 2008 8:42 AM.

Schroeder's Minions was the previous entry in this blog.

The Gender Politics of Kickass is the next entry in this blog.

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