“Jesse Engel is playing an instrument that’s somewhere between a clavichord and a Hammond organ – 18th-century classical crossed with 20th-century rhythm and blues. Then he drags a marker across his laptop screen. Suddenly, the instrument is somewhere else between a clavichord and a Hammond. ..Then he drags the marker back and forth as quickly as he can, careening though all the sounds between these two very different instruments.” Cade Metz checks out this new – what is it, exactly? – called NSynth.
Category: music
Diversity In Opera? Here’s Where It Is
“Most of the discussion about race in the operatic world revolves around singers, rather than composers, of color. What this conversation risks missing is that notably inventive work, particularly work foregrounding black creators, is already being done elsewhere—namely, on the institutional margins, by companies like OperaCréole, whose smaller size affords them the opportunity for innovation.”
The Invention That Revolutionized Music In The 1920s
The lathe democratized music production and distribution, just as mixtapes, file-sharing, streaming services, and platforms like Bandcamp did. And musicians have rediscovered it.
Composer Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s Spiritual Music Comes To Light
“After John Coltrane’s death, there wasn’t an easy road ahead for a musician like her. His legacy was enormous. At the time, jazz was nearly completely dominated by male players. And Alice’s own music was experimental, to say the least. Even so, she made a string of albums for major jazz labels in the 1960s and 70s.” Then she started to withdraw from commercial music, and she founded an ashram.
What Does A Composer Do After An Opera Premieres?
In this case, he has to bring himself back down to earth – and work. “No matter how well things turned out (or at least appeared to), it’s important for me not to believe my own ‘hype.’ What I’m really left with, in the end, is an opportunity.”
The Latest Winner Of The Moog Innovation Award Fought Her Machine – And Confusion In The Music Industry
The noises Suzanne Ciani created “for perhaps her most infamous sound effect, she says, were invented in a matter of minutes. ‘My brain was working at lightning speed in those days,’ she laughs, of how she came up with Coca Cola’s signature pop, bubble and fizz. … ‘It was brazen. But I was desperate, I was starving. I was in New York living on Canal Street for $75 a month, and I was propelled by hunger, really.'”
The Houston Symphony Lays Off Three People In Administration
In addition, there was a “restructuring,” but it didn’t affect any musicians.
Did Sex Kill The Love Song?
A study says yes. “The research analysed 1,250 songs released between 1960 and 2008, and found that, while only 7% of songs from the 60s were about sex, that number had increased to 40% by the end of the study.”
Can ‘Madame Butterfly’ Be Saved With A Radical Re-Write?
Maybe? Heartbeat Opera is trying. Co-writer Jacob Ashworth “said he expected many audience members to be relieved to see an adaptation that confronts the opera’s biggest issues. ‘No more trying to enjoy the beauty while quietly bearing the racism,’ he said.”
Striving To Revive The Ghostly Sounds Of Electronic Music Composer Maryanne Amacher
The composer created experiences that are hard to recreate: “A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen and a collaborator with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, Amacher had some of her greatest successes with huge sound-design installations tailored for specific spaces. These ‘linked room’ works exploited psychoacoustic effects that she pioneered: A foyer might hit the spectator with high-pitched tones meant to excite strange inner-ear responses. An adjoining space could feature quiet, slowly fading bass frequencies, lingering at the edge of auditory perception.”