World Listening Day is July 18 (which is tomorrow as I write this), and in commemoration of that, I’ve made some recordings from the subway system here in New York City. As I mentioned in a recent post I love the sounds of the subway trains and stations, and I wanted to get some of these sounds recorded so that they could be shared. So, if you’ve got about 42 minutes handy, you can listen to all eight of the recordings I’ve made, or just listen to them one at a time.
Continue reading
Month: July 2013
So we had a contest…
…to determine the best barbershop quartets and choruses. We have one every year, this year it was in Toronto. It’s one of my favorite events of the year for sure. Tuning, just intonation in particular, is central to my aesthetic as a composer and performer. The sound of chords locked in tune is an exhilarating experience, and unfortunately contemporary musical training in the academy doesn’t emphasize tuning at the degree I prefer. Classical training (for lack of a better term) seems to exist in a world of “in tune enough” rather than aspiring to be perfectly in tune. So the International Convention and Competition is the best place to hear the most in-tune and ringing chords in the world.
Continue reading
Trains, Buskers, and an Opera: Sounds of a New City
At the end of June I left San Diego and SoCal for the environs of New York City and took up residence in the neighborhood of Bushwick in Brooklyn. I lived in San Diego my entire life, and as I was finishing my master’s degree at San Diego State I decided it was time for a change. I looked around the United States for places to relocate and created a list of towns based upon existing contacts. After deliberation, Brooklyn was my choice.
Continue reading