What we hear when we listen
There has been a lot of discussion in musical circles about what we listen to – how we listen – when we hear music. Put another way, we want to know what we hear when we listen. Continue reading “An Unideal Listener”
Music Blog
The Best Music
I am often asked about favourite composers (or favourite music). It’s a question I hate, not just because as soon as I am asked it my mind goes entirely blank and I forget the name Mozart, but also because there are so many and whenever I mention one name I despair later that I’ve forgotten to mention another.
When I do manage to muster some of the names below, they are often met with blank stares.
So I decided to gather names into one list, and make a couple of sample playlist for anyone who wants to listen Continue reading “The Best Music”
a rhetoric of art
The ‘obligation to speak’ produces a dialogue of art – a rhetoric of art – in which I sometimes enjoy participating. Generating this rhetoric of art is sometimes clarifying about my work (for me or, I hope, for others) and/but it is also sometimes a frustrating afterthought, an obligation. I do think about trying to create organic behaviour, natural textures, etc. in my music, an idea I talk about often, and this idea – this product of rhetoric – has helped me refine what I do, why I do it and how I do it. It would, however, be remiss of me if I did not also acknowledge that there are times, absent of coherent rhetoric, where I am inarticulately art-full, where I am playing with tones – imagining tones – without any coherent sense of what or why, but compelled wether by childish delight, poetic inspiration or pathological curiosity ‘to art’ (the verb). In articulating this, though, don’t I turn it into ‘a rhetoric of art’ just as I separate it from that? The chicken-egg dance begins again.
Three Horizons
Tomorrow marks the last of the ‘Three Horizons’ concerts (see here, here and here for background). In preparation I thought I’d collate some trivia about Margaret Sutherland, Miriam Hyde, and Raymond Hanson, some of the featured Australian Composers, for a bit of background reading.
Margaret Sutherland
A piece half a lifetime in the making
In the middle of working on a new piece for violin and piano, violinist Rebecca Gill, who commissioned the work as part of the 2016 Stefan Kruger Scholarship, sent me an e-mail with an old photo of the two of us. She came across the photo – from the hazy days before Facebook albums – while looking for material for her upcoming tour, ‘Three Horizons’, which features the new work alongside an all Australian program. The new work, similarly named ‘three horizons’, is actually three pieces, rolled into one.
‘Look what I found!’ she exclaimed. Continue reading “A piece half a lifetime in the making”
Writing about music is like dancing about apocrypha
Composing thoughts on Andrew Durkin’s ‘Decompsition: A Music Manifesto’
I’m currently reading Andrew Durkin’s ‘Decomposition: a Music Manifesto’. It’s refreshing, insightful, and very readable, despite its size. Plenty to agree with, to champion, and plenty to disagree with too – exactly what I want from a book – and as it’s primarily concerned with music, generally, and authorship/authenticity more specifically, it’s rather an ideal book for me. Continue reading “Writing about music is like dancing about apocrypha”
blog impromptu
I was once in the audience for an interview with the American Playwright Edward Albee. His manner was one of intriguing evasion and resistance, not at all unlikeable, but perhaps more tolerable from a distance.
Boulez and the new, getting old (Or ‘Boulez is not dead, yet’).
For a variety of reasons I’ve been thinking recently about, in need of ‘clever-er’ words, “newness” and “oldness”. Last night I travelled to London to hear two of the concerts in the latest series of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s inspired and inspiring Total Immersion days. It was in celebration of the former enfant terrible of classical music, Pierre Boulez, and his 90th Birthday.
Continue reading “Boulez and the new, getting old (Or ‘Boulez is not dead, yet’).”
Selling the Vanguard
The San Francisco Symphony has a series called Soundbox aimed at attracting a younger audience with a ‘cooler vibe’ than we’re told classical concerts have. Great. It sounds, and looks interesting. It is elegantly made, and executed, with intelligent, compelling musical programming. Sure it’s dressed up with nice lights, a gig ambience and the hope of drawing in people conscious of the cool, but why wouldn’t those be good things? They’re doing good work and even extending everyone’s musical horizons on the way. It served to highlight my uncomfortableness with a similar project closer to home.
The Australian Symphony – In search of Australia’s 9 ‘Greats’
I recently saw an article attempting to find a list of 9 Great Symphonies each by a different American Composer. Ever noticed how symphonies are always ‘great’… and never make double digits? This article was a spin-off from another article in-turn spun-off from a Facebook game so I guess that makes this commentary on commentary on commentary ‘ad inceptionitum’. I immediately began to wonder what this game might look like for Australian Symphonies. Continue reading “The Australian Symphony – In search of Australia’s 9 ‘Greats’”
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