The small part of the Baltimore music scene that I run in has gotten some big mentions outside of our fair city these past couple of weeks. Last week, Mobtown Modern‘s presentation of the first ever arrangement of the complete Rite of Spring for big band was plugged by Alex Ross on his New Yorker blog. And today, Baltimore’s own intrepid beatboxer / vocal percussionist, Shodekeh, was thrust into the spotlight on NewMusicBox, the web magazine of the American Music Center. Those who were at Sho’s show at the Creative Alliance back in March will recognize some of the performance footage in the video. Check out the video and be sure to catch Shodekeh in his Baltimore Symphony debut this July 23 at the Meyerhoff.
Posts Tagged ‘video’
Well, not all of them. But famed 16th century Italian prince-composer-murderer Carlo Gesualdo certainly seems to have been. (And I’m not talking about chromaticism, folks.) 10 reasons why bloggers are better than critics. What would a story about the nightmares induced by Brian Ferneyhough’s music sound like on This American Life? A look into the marching-band Shostakovich underground. Paying orchestras to play new music. Musicians in the Honolulu Symphony are not hanging loose. And an invitation to create a classical/new music viral video. We’ve got the votes for your weekly starred items.
• When we think of Renaissance music, we generally think of some very prim and buttoned-up stuff. However, a new book by Glenn Watkins about the Italian composer-prince Carlo Gesualdo, who is best known for his chromatic choral music (and oh, and murdering his wife), uncovers information that shows that he was a pretty psychotic and kinky dude. He ditched his first wife after accusing her of adultery though when he married for the second time, he got his freak on regularly. This culminated in the second wife accusing Gesualdo’s concubines of witchcraft. This quote from the testimony from the inquisition of the accused pretty much says it all: “That the aforementioned Aurelia made the prince drink her menstrual blood as a purgative is established by four witnesses to extrajudicial confessions by the defendant . . . Aurelia declared that the aforementioned Polisandra had told her that if she would take a slice of bread and place it inside her “nature” and after it was saturated with her own seed, she would give it to the prince to eat with sauce.” [Guardian]
• How does Proper Discord think bloggers are better than music critics? Let him count the ways; 10 of them. [Proper Discord]
• A small woman is about to perform Casandra’s Dream Song by Brian Ferneyhough. Before she begins she tells a story about how she had nightmares about the piece; it became known to her as Casandra’s Nightmare. For a time, she could only bear to deal with the music a line at a time and carried carved up bits of the score around with her every day. How would Ira Glass from This American Life have illuminated this story of solo musician, new music, difficulty, and fear? WWIGD? [Mind The Gap]
• Forget indie-classical, now we’ve got marching-band-classical. It’s become something of an underground cult thing for marching bands—as if marching bands weren’t cultish enough already—to play them some Shostakovich; the Scherzo from Symphony No. 10 seems to be particularly popular. [Unquiet Thoughts]
• Unhappy with the amount of contemporary music program by your local orchestra? Wanna change that? It’s apparently easy. All you have to do is call up your local orchestra, find out how much it costs them to put on a single concert, raise that amount of money, give them the money, and then enjoy the fruits of your labor (and the sneers of the grumpy orchestra members since you made them play an entire concert of new music). File under: taking the bull by the horns. [NewMusicBox]
• The musicians in the Honolulu Symphony are pissed. They presented a filing last week stating that “[based] on its history of gross mismanagement and incompetence . . . management is incapable of the task reorganization and a Chapter 11 trustee should be appointed, or, in the alternative, the case should be converted to Chapter 7 or dismissed.” You think they’re close with Christoph Eschenbach? [Adaptistration]
• New plan to save classical music: make a viral classical/new music video. This is your mission should you choose to accept it. [Mind The Gap]
