Archive for the 'musings' Category
There are worse things to do on a day off than play Nintendogs while listening to Leon Kirchner. (Would this behavior have been considered rebellious in some particular time period? Kirchner’s music sounds like it could probably have been the Classical equivalent of the Sex Pistols at some point in terms of cultural reception.)
I somehow stayed on a Yo-Yo Ma and David Zinman kick, listening through the 1996 album of cello and orchestra works by Richard Danielpour, Leon Kirchner, and Christopher Rouse. The last movement of the Danielpour has a motif that mirrors Hitoshi Sakimoto’s main theme from RomeoxJuliet, which was first aired in 2007. I wonder if Sakimoto had heard this concerto before writing the score. It certainly fits both pieces. The Kirchner is quite pretty and expressive, and Zinman has such a respectfully affectionate portrayal of him in the liner notes.
What has become surprising to me, personally, is how much more attuned my ear has become to listening to these compositions. I remember feeling confused by these three concertos upon first listening. But they make sense now and I can hear actual structure and ideas. It probably started with either the Barber Violin Concerto of the Corigliano Violin Sonata: pieces that I could somehow make sense of despite their dissonances and unexpectedly musical harmonies. Now, after performing not a few works abiding by these same principles, this way of listening has improved? I suppose I can’t complain about it.
When I took off my headphones, Dvorak’s Violin Sonatina Op. 100 (Itzhak Perlman) was streaming through my dad’s computer in the adjacent room. It’s still such a cute piece after all these years. I should get around to learning it properly sometime.
June 01 2010 | games and music and musings | No Comments »
FreeCell is for listening to new music. It’s just barely stimulating enough.
One major benefit of being back at my parents’ house is being able to riffle through all the albums my dad owns but I never paid enough attention to when I was younger (He owns 14 copies of the Dvorak Cello Concerto…)
Tonight is the Barber Cello Concerto and Britten Symphony for Cello and Orchestra (Yo-Yo Ma, David Zinman, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. ) – both of which I’ve never heard before (though Barber’s Violin Concerto is hands down my favourite violin concerto.)
Barber could definitely have made this concerto more “modern.” I’m glad he didn’t; My dad probably wouldn’t have bought it if it was. What an amazing recording.
May 31 2010 | games and music and musings | No Comments »
There is no more special or powerful being anywhere than a real mother. It probably takes more skill to be a mother than run a country. For starters, it’s not really an office you can leave once you’ve stepped inside. For afterstarters, they’re so very very scary when they are angry.
But some of us get lucky too. I will never forget my mother teaching me to read and do math. Or the fact that her best dishes are impossible to replicate perfectly and I miss them terribly sometimes. Or the time she explained to me how babies are made, but only on a cellular level (When I asked how the cells meet, she gave me a medical textbook and a smile.)
Or stealing back the N64 from my apartment because she was in MarioKart64 withdrawl.
Besides, who else could say those magic words as truly as a mother? (“You need a bra”)
Happy Mother’s Day, Mum.
May 09 2010 | food and games and musings and semi-facts | No Comments »
Has anyone ever seen a male in a commercial where bathroom scum is the main villain? If so, has he ever been the one horrified and/or cleaning said antagonist? Even in Mr. Clean advertisements, it seems as though he just stands next to a woman who is cleaning or has had success cleaning. The feminist in me is very curious, but she has never watched enough television to know for sure. What if the Brawny paper towel man is a metaphor for wanting to use a man to wipe up stuff?
March 21 2010 | musings | 2 Comments »
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First post of the new year (both Western and Chinese) and it’s now March. Life has gotten itself on an interestingly skewed track again and as soon as the confidence to put some persona of myself in the public returns, I’ll be back here more. I miss this semi-sanctuary and everyone one around it, but disrespect and ignorance HURTS, and recovery is hard. Self-reflection has become almost as routine as a shower. Finding the courage to enjoy performing music – without fear, without inhibition – again is the first great obstacle. Family is beautiful.
So though there there’s been considerable slackage here, the reading list is still being maintained; not that there has been much time to read lately. The old habit of reading alongside a meal has been passed up to either not having the proper time to put towards this, to newspapers, or to having meals with kind, mostly new acquaintances – which is typically a good excursion too. In the meantime, every so often, something is written on the [Twitter] about the musical events around. And instead of reading literature, a few hours a week are spent reading a score alongside its recording. This activity is nothing entirely new (see previous posts on music) but lately it’s been happening on a kind of weekly basis.
I probably won’t include scores in the reading list though given that the manner of study is quite different from reading a book. I may start keeping list of performances, however, because I keep forgetting to sign into the myspace to update it.
This week’s composition of fascination is Michael Nyman’s String Quartet No. 2, particularly movements 3 and 4. I found the other three quartets somewhat underwhelming, but full of good intentions to complement the good writing. However, String Quartet No. 2 appeals to me in the same fashion as Bloch’s String Quintets and Gorecki’s String Quartet No. 3 – the intense but balanced exploration of culture, rhythmical architectures, and a certain kind of desperation and triumph pervading throughout.
Last week was Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. That piece pretty much explains itself (especially if Martha Argerich is at the helm.) The second movement of the concerto is heartbreaking and unexpected while the overall intricacy and detail of the entire concerto is stunning. What was almost as surprising, however, was the ratio of string to wind players that were familiar with the composition. Apparently, many standard wind excerpts are taken from the concerto (The bassoon solo in the third movement is particularly impressive. During our next rehearsal together, my bassoon teaching assistant friend casually performed the excerpt for me on the spot – by memory.) but to many of my string colleagues, the piece is unfamiliar. I wonder which other pieces can be placed in this category.
March 07 2010 | music and musings and waffle | No Comments »
Getting a 90 minute professional massage at a 5-star spa and hotel as the first professional massage of my life was not entirely like my first experience of going to a strip club almost exactly a year ago.
It’s interesting, involves a lot of nudity, feeling quite out of place – though intrigued – and I’ll probably never do it again.
Paper: 1/3: Article for the Music Educators Journal
Progress: optimistic only out of context with the other papers
Theme?: the lyrics kill me at some point or other; hi, December.winter
Tracks: (all files uploaded onto zshare.net. Music is rightful property of the artists. I don’t own any of these…Please buy their music and support them.)
+ [Last Night] – Justin Timberlake
+ [I'll Never Smile Again] – Priscilla Ahn (Frank Sinatra cover)
+ [Winter Song] – Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson
December 13 2009 | music and musings and travels | 1 Comment »
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With the exception of Facebook, I’ve always procrastinated when it comes to joining social network tools. Yesterday, for whatever same reasons I created a now-defunct personal myspace page back in the day, I created a Twitter page. The first post read “wonder if i’ll stick with it.
Given the number of times I have visited the homepage today, written something, and then decided not to publish it (There’s still only one “tweet” on my page.), Twitter just may turn out to be something of a personal challenge.
Or I could just not utilize it. But then, what was the point of having one? Is impulse required when using Twitter? How might this destroy me…?
November 19 2009 | musings | 1 Comment »
Why are we ever anyone but ourselves? When would we be? Why?
Agonizing is a luxury.
November 10 2009 | musings and waffle | No Comments »
“It is all a long way from the beeps and bloops of the first video games.”
I’m surprised it took, of all publications, the [New York Times] this long to write some variation of this sentence – namely using “long way” in combination with “bleeps and bloops.” Fairly nice article otherwise, though.
In other news, it’s time to find a new sentence, or just onomatopoeic sounds, to describe how evolved video game music and the culture such around has become, methinks.
October 28 2009 | games and music and musings | 1 Comment »
In the category of bad habits, can a person include endless retrospection amongst them? Earlier this week, I commented rather carelessly to a friend that that I don’t regret because “life is too short for regrets.” But is constantly looking back, analyzing, and finding meaning is what has passed considerably long ago just as bad?
I do spend an inordinate amount of time in this blog writing backwards. I suppose I could always just write more here as soon as I have an inkling of coherent thought.
Hah. <3
December 21 2008 | musings | 1 Comment »
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