120 Years of Electronic Music

What's the oldest electronica track in your iTunes collection? Got anything from the late 1800s? For all of those interested in things musical and mechanical, Obsolete.com has compiled a cool list of gadgets that make beeps, doinks and twitters. Lots of details for those tinkering history buffs.

Paris in NYC

The other night I attending one of the most French nights I've had in NYC in a long time. I attended a closing party at Point of View Gallery host by the almost stereotypically French Amelie Sourget, a young, well-to-do socialite who never missed an opportunity to be welcoming, charming and just plain fun to her many guest. My writing partner Andy Parsegian is a great friend of hers, and made sure to pass on the invitation to me.

After many glasses of wine, Andy and I went to Tout Va Bien, a great bistro in midtown. If you want to hear someone speak fluent French followed by a broad Brooklyn-Queens accent, make sure to chat with the owner's son, the Bistro's very capable and warm host. I even got a extra brownie points by recognizing Stravinsky's picture on the Wall of Fame. The owner said he use to drop by on a regular basis when he pass through the Big Apple.

A couple from the gallery accompanied us on our bistro trip, and as luck would have it, the young man was a wine seller. Make sure to check out Circus and Micheal Lynch at your local wine store. Fantastic wine for almost nothing!

With all the anti-French sentiment in the US right now, I hope that people don't forget that when it comes to living well and valuing the simple pleasures of life (friends, food, romance, etc) the French still seem to consistently deliver. Thank God I live in a town that has a little piece of almost every part the world in it's back yard.

Home Recording with Renee

My brother and I had an email exchange regarding Elvis Costello's appearance on Solid Gold at time of his single "Everyday I Write the Book", which I'm not posting for the single fact that Elvis' dancing is so horrible that it take away from the song. And there also exists a live recording of the song from the extending re-issue of Punch the Clock. I decided to see if there way any other video footage of Costello performing the song live on YouTube when I found this: a simple, humble, honest rendition of the song by a woman named Renee. There are plenty of missteps in her guitar playing, and the quality of the video is not great, but this little snapshot of home recording captures what I love most about the web: human beings communicating our most precious thoughts and feeling without recourse to gatekeepers, critics and big business, although I'd pressed to name a bigger company than Google, the company who runs YouTube. With all it's flaws, this little snippet held my attention for much longer than anything on that circus called American Idol. Oh well, I suppose the producers of that show will keep pitching people who will be forgotten in a year (or less) while I'll keep looking for people like Renee.

Free Ride Ending Soon?

I just downloaded the latest version of Skype for Mac, and I noticed a big change. It's not the technical changes you may have read about online, but it's something more disheartening. Previous versions of Skype greeted the user with the slogan "The World Can Talk For Free". Now, the words "Take a Deep Breath" appear on screen as the program loads. Not exactly the same thing now, is it. Are we to assume that the free ride is over? I hate to be a pessimist, but while great deals like Skype can't go on forever, did they have to use the word FREE in previous editions of the program? I suppose it's a small point, but free or not, with Nokia phones being able to run a Symbian version of Skype, it's still the best deal in telephony out there.

Unfinished Webern, Finished

Auto-Webern. Not really sure if this is an improvement, but I thought i'd post regardless.

http://www.essl.at/works/webernuhrwerk/download.html

Mstislav Rostropovich

Today the world lost one of it's greatest musicians: Mstislav Rostropovich. Not only was he a master of the cello, Rostropovich was a gifted conductor and pianist, accompanying his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya.

I know the world will discuss his recordings and performances today, but what I most admired about Rostropovich was his ability to use his enthusiasm and talents to defend others who were unable to think and act freely due to political or artistic oppression.

Hindsight may diminish the bravery of those who choose to take a stand for what they believe in, but I think we are extremely susceptible to the pressures of fitting in, of not rocking the boat, of not wanting to be out of fashion. But time and time again, Rostropovich's choices both as an artist and a human being proved to be the correct ones.

When the contemporary music scene was dominated by composers who followed Pierre Boulez, Rostropovich continued to support composers like Britten, Henze and Dutilleux who were no less rigorous than the serialists, but whose music didn't reject the grace, beauty and sensuous pleasure of the previous 200 years of music making. He supported the Polish composers after the political thaw of the late '50 and '60, and had he not come to the aid of Alfred Schnittke, how much more music would we have lost from this master had Rostropovich not offered him commission after commission, allowing Schnittke to complete some of his finest works before his untimely death.

But when Rostropovich and his wife harbored Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn when he was on the run, his sacrifices could not have been more personal. Here, Rostropovich put his own life at risk because of his belief in the freedom of all people to express themselves without fear of persecution, imprisonment, torture or even death. And while we can all say that was a different time, in a different country, we know that the world's capacity for this kind of oppression has not diminished in the intervening years, but has grown to encompass east and west, rich and poor, democracies and dictatorships, and yet the members of the artistic community who act as selflessly as Rostropovich grows fewer and fewer. As always, we took Slava for granted when he was alive, but let's not forget his example in our own lives, no matter what our vocation or profession might be.

Namaste

My mom just called a few minutes ago with a story she read on the web. I have no idea if it's true, but it's quite beautiful nonetheless. Here it is:

Albert Einstein was fasinated by Mohandas Gandhi. He watched newsreel after newsreel of Gandhi's doings in India. having seen Gandhi greet people in the street with his hands placed together, as if in prayer, and with a bow, he wondered what Gandhi was saying (newsreels had no sound in those days). Einstein wrote Gandhi and asked him what he was saying. The simple reply: "Namaste." Einstein then wrote again to ask the meaning of this hindu word, "Namaste", and the reply was: "I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you of light, love, truth, peace and wisdom. I honor the place in you where, when you are in that place, and I am in that place, there is only one of us."

My natural reflex is to distance myself from all labels and associations, primarily due to my stance that one must take on all the good as well as the bad of any group if you chose to be a member, but reading this makes me intensely proud of my ancestors, and it's probably something I've tacitly understood my whole life. Strange that so much technology (google, cell phone, etc) was necessary in bringing this word's meaning to light. Namaste.