7/4

Brain scans tune in to personal nature of improvising music By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY From Eric Clapton to Miles Davis to Yo-Yo Ma, we've long heard that when musicians improvise, they're engaged in an intensely personal pursuit. A pair of scientists have scanned musicians' brains and now say that's true.More precisely, when musicians improvise, they're using the same part of the brain that responds to a simple request: Tell me about yourself. In new findings, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders say they have located the region of the brain — the medial prefrontal cortex — that lights up when musicians improvise. It's the same area we all use when we're talking about ourselves — who we are, what makes us tick. It makes perfect sense to Charles Limb, a Hopkins researcher and jazz saxophonist who holds a joint faculty appointment at Hopkins' music conservatory. "Because the person is spontaneously composing, they really are revealing themselves musically," he says. "It's like your own musical autobiography." At the same time, he and a colleague found, improvising musicians turn off the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a portion of the brain linked to planning, careful actions and self-censoring. Limb says most writing about jazz has traditionally stressed how great musicians "find their own sound." Now, he says, we know what that means in scientific terms: "It's basically sculpting your own identity, the voice you're going to use." And he has the brain scans to prove it. Limb and a colleague, Allen Braun of the communication disorder center, designed an unusual experiment. They recruited six jazz pianists to play a specially designed keyboard while lying on their backs in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. Subjects played scales, simple memorized pieces and improvisations on both. During the improvisations, a recorded jazz group played in their headphones. When Limb and Braun examined the scans produced during improvisation and stripped away evidence of brain activity common to all playing, they were left with signals from the medial prefrontal cortex. Limb says the brain fires similarly when people improvise while speaking, improvise solutions to problems and dream. Next up: brain scans of poets, visual artists and "non-artists asked to improvise." The findings were published Feb. 27 in Public Library of Science ONE. Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-0...ain-scans_N.htm

a bit of a previous conversation about these folks from another thread.

link Box Elders Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Prog Attacks! Hailing the oft-derided genius of these bloat-tastic motherfuckers by Phil Freeman March 4th, 2008 12:00 AM Sorry, Nuge. Sorry, Frampton. Double-live albums are for pussies. The '70s were the era of the triple-live album. Santana's Lotus. Yes's Yessongs. Wings' Wings Over America. Shit, you can throw Chicago's four-disc Chicago at Carnegie Hall on the list—just don't throw it on the stereo. And, of course, Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends, the album that proves the trio considered the 20-minute studio version of "Tarkus" restrained: Live, it balloons to a mind-crushing 27:24. And let's not even discuss the 35-minute version of the "Karn Evil 9" suite that ends the show. Emerson, Lake & Palmer were some bloat-tastic motherfuckers. Except they weren't. As this deluxe reissue series reveals to the neophyte, the band's brand of epic, classical-soaked prog was actually tight as hell. When you've only got three guys up there, even if each of them plays like a meth-addled octopus (and at least two of them do— guitarist/bassist/vocalist Greg Lake's virtuosity is slightly more understated), the trend is always gonna be toward rhythmic impetus rather than solo frenzy. Simply put, Emerson, Lake & Palmer fucking rocked. Their self-titled studio debut, from 1970, was a collection of stuff each member wrote individually, except for "The Barbarian," which was cribbed from Bartók, and another cut, "Knife Edge," that's based on Janácek but also includes a healthy chunk of Bach. (In fine British rock tradition—see "Zeppelin, Led"—the songwriting credits didn't reflect these appropriations until years later.) But the pattern— brain-blastingly loud organ and Moog lines, thundering yet surprisingly jazzy drums, almost mellow vocals, and songs that cribbed openly and shamelessly from classical—had been set. It continued on the band's second and third discs (both released in 1971), Tarkus, and a live run through Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Trilogy was relatively pop-friendly by comparison, and featured "From the Beginning," ELP's second big single after "Lucky Man," from the debut. But then came their studio masterpiece, the album that made them gods to stoned high-school students across America. Brain Salad Surgery, the 1973 album that got them selling out arenas (and the only one of these Shout! Factory reissues to come in a digipak, the better to reproduce its foldout H.R. Giger artwork), is a stone killer from beginning (their recasting of William Blake's hymn "Jerusalem" as an epic call to prog-rock battle) to end (the hilariously cynical "Karn Evil 9" suite). Revisiting this catalog 35 (!) years later, it's amazing how little music has "progressed." Snip 20 random seconds of Emersonian Moog-frenzy from the live album and play it for a Wolf Eyes fan—see if he can tell the difference. Another quality that leaps out is the propulsive rhythm work. What happened to all the great British drummers? In the early '70s, English boys could actually wail—Carl Palmer, John Bonham, Bill Bruford, Alan White, and even Phil Collins were kicking ass behind the kit. This allowed ELP to dip into honky-tonk and even swing rhythms when the mood struck them—which it did with almost distressing frequency ("Benny the Bouncer," "Are You Ready Eddy," "Barrelhouse Shake-Down"). For prog-rockers, they sure liked to look backward. Listeners interested in sonic surprise should do the same. These six studio albums and two live discs are the gateways to a world of balls-out craziness the likes of which is nowhere to be found in rock circa 2008.

I thought that's what made it bizarre.

I always thought she's so cute.

Hell yeah!

That's what I heard, but if it's true - that's a shame.

Eddie Van Halen undergoing medical tests Mon Mar 3, 2008 9:02pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen is undergoing tests for an undisclosed medical problem, causing his band Van Halen to reschedule four upcoming U.S. concerts, a spokesman for the tour promoter said on Monday. Van Halen has fought cancer and alcohol in the past but a statement released by Live Nation made no mention of his current problem. "According to Eddie Van Halen's physician, he is undergoing a battery of comprehensive medical tests to determine a defined diagnosis and recommended medical procedures," the statement said. A company spokesman said there was no further information on the guitarist's condition beyond the statement. Van Halen, 53, co-founded the group that bears his name with his brother, drummer Alex, and played guitar and keyboards. Van Halen had a string of hits including "Runnin' with the Devil" and "Panama" starting in the late 1970s. In August the group unveiled plans for a 25-city North American tour that began in September 2007 and has continued since then. Live Nation said Van Halen's condition caused the band to reschedule concerts in Dallas, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Raleigh, North Carolina. Those shows were scheduled to take place early this month and have been put off until April. In the 1990s, Eddie Van Halen had hip replacement surgery and was treated for oral cancer. He also has battled alcohol abuse with a stint in rehab and recently was divorced from actress Valerie Bertinelli.

Oh...so this was looking like an old BN thing, but it's also an AAJ thing? Sheesh.

This is sad news. I knew he was sick again...

If her debut had come out on Verve I don't think anyone would have noticed or cared, that's what was expected of Verve at the time. I didn't think it was an issue then and in hindsight I think it's pretty damn hilarious what an uproar it caused. Let's face it, the "Blue Note" that exists today isn't even REMOTELY the same label it was in 1965. So if they put out a Slayer album I wouldn't care. Apples and Oranges. Same here. I always thought this was all kinda strange. Understandable, but strange.

Hi Bill!

For me, it was just okay... Kinda noodle-y...Needed some percussion/rhythm... perhaps a more cowbell joke would do it.

or Mahavishnu or Larry Coryell or Jimmy Page or the Byrds or...

I missed that one! I did. And I saw it too.

In Montreal is I have now, maybe that's why I never played more than a few times.

I have Charlie Haden with Egberto Gismonti In Montreal. I'll give it a spin, I don't think I ever gave it more than one.

Creative, but you couldn't hold off until the 1st could you...

Someday I'll find out. That's a hell of a comparison.

Ascension is an amazing landmark album. In fact, I'll get it out so I can listen to it later.

I'm getting my 1st listen to the Turangalila from a French radio broadcast recording now...I like what I hear! Olivier MESSIAEN (1908-1992) PARIS, France Salle Pleyel 01 FEB 2008 Orchestre Symphonique de la SWR Baden-Baden et Fribourg dir. Sylvain Cambreling Roger Muraro : piano Valérie Hartmann-Claverie : Ondes Martenot

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/289616.html Classical Terry Riley, “The Cusp of Magic” performed by the Kronos Quartet and Wu Man, pipa (Nonesuch). No investigation of minimalism in America would miss the cherubic patriarchal presence of Terry Riley, whose “In C” was, at one time, even more of a rallying point than the music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass (who was known as “Phil Glass” back in the music’s protozoan downtown years.) Riley will be 73 this year. In 2005, the Kronos Quartet — among the greatest benefactors extant of multicultural postmodernism in music — commissioned Riley to write a piece in honor of his own 70th birthday. The resultant piece is this stunner for the Kronos and the great Chinese musician Wu Man whose instrument is the pipa, a kind of Chinese lute (and who also sings on the disc). The music is described as a “rite of midsummer” about the transition “from the mundane to the magical by juggling different spheres of experience” in the words of liner note writer Gregory Dubinsky. It is suffused, among other things, with love of children, using children’s toys for some of the sonic sources and Wu Man’s lullabies to her young son Vincent. It is, then, music of the spheres, of the religious temple and the nursery and it is a beautiful celebration of them all. ★★★ 1/2 (Jeff Simon)

Never was too impressed with what I heard on the radio. His fans rave about him.

I don't own a copy! I'll stop by the B&N and look up the bit on Varese this week. I should check to see if the local library (almost next door) has it.