On Tuesday, November 12, Compressorhead performed a concert at Union Square in Manhattan. Compressorhead is a band of robots who perform rock music. For those of you that follow my #metalmonday series on twitter, you’ve probably read my occasional tweets about Compressorhead; they are physically a metal band, more than any other band in the world, so of course I’ll mention them whenever they pop up in the news cycle.
http://instagram.com/p/gogECsrN8B/
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More often then I like to admit, I’m surprised by my lack of awareness of pop culture and pop music. About a week ago I saw an article on the BBC that was about Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and Clifford Harris Jr.’s recent single, “Blurred Lines,” and the claims of copying from the estate of Marvin Gaye. In brief, the article addressed issues of music authorship and ownership, and it raised in my mind the question about what constitutes copying, and what constitutes an original work.
Last May, the day after the concert premiere of my opera, one of my singers and I drove up to Palm Desert to see a friend of ours perform in Sondheim’s, A Little Night Music. On the way back to San Diego (about a two-hour drive) we had a lengthy debate/conversation about music for the stage: opera vs. musical vs. operetta, etc. What I remember most clearly about our conversation was when we both agreed that Night Music is certainly an operetta. I’m much more liberal than my friend about calling something an opera rather than a musical, so I was willing to call Sondheim’s show an opera—or a musical. Honestly, it doesn’t matter much to me. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t get dragged into long debates about the finer details of what genre a work of music might be; still, the fact that I felt comfortable calling the work an operetta did seem to undermine my convictions, so the moment stuck with me.
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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.
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…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.
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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.
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For the first time in many years I am not singing on Easter Sunday, so I figured I would post a track that is appropriate for the season of Easter. This is my setting of Matthew 6:19-21, from the sermon on the mount, for a cappella men’s quartet
This was recorded by Gary Lewis, the baritone of Max Q, the 2007 International Champion Barbershop Quartet. I was inspired to compose this anthem by Joseph Clokey’s (who is the father of Art Clokey, creator of Gumby) setting of the same text, which I sang many times when I was a Gentleman of the Choir at St. Paul’s Cathedral in San Diego, California.
On April 25, 2012 at 5:00pm San Diego State University Opera Theater will be presenting an unstaged workshop/reading of a new one-act opera: The Scent of Jasmine on Parker Street. The show’s story was created by local poet and artist, Ted Washington. Ted also wrote the books and lyrics (or the libretto) for the show, and I composed the music.
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I had the opportunity recently to engage in a comprehensive study of a particular type of song: the barbershop contest uptune. Most people in America are aware of barbershop quartets and have a passing familiarity with the barbershop style of four-part, a cappella singing. What many of these folks are not aware of is the barbershop contest. Every year dozens of these contests happen all over world. Barbershop quartets and chorus compete against each other at a variety of levels. At these contests you will generally hear two types of songs: the barbershop ballad, which emphasizes sustained harmonies and a liberal use of rubato; and the uptune, which features more rhythmic elements and is sung at a faster tempo.
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On Sunday, March 18 the San Diego State University Chamber Choir sang at St. Paul’s Cathedral’s regular Sunday Evensong service. The service of Evensong is an Episcopalian (or Anglican) service that takes place about the hour of dusk and includes a lot of music–much more than the usual morning mass. Everyone in the SDSU Choir had a great time, and it was a wonderful experience for many of the young vocalists, some of which had never experienced a service like this.