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fasstrack

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Posts posted by fasstrack

  3. Death of the iPod (Everyone's buying vinyl)

    in Audio Talk

    Posted

    7 hours ago, A Lark Ascending said:

    Early 20thC aristocratic 'art for art's sake' crowd (Virginia Woolf etc) who looked down their noses at the 'common herd' for lacking their cultural taste and discrimination. They assumed the 'masses' had no independence of thought but merely copied others. They'd be apoplectic if they could see the world of iPods and mobile phones. 

    I don't fancy elitists. Not where I'm coming from at all. My beef is wholly with the 'disconnectedness'...

  4. Death of the iPod (Everyone's buying vinyl)

    in Audio Talk

    Posted · Edited by fasstrack

    On 28/08/2016 at 10:31 PM, A Lark Ascending said:

    All very Bloomsbury Group.  

    ? sorry, that reference sailed over my head...

    9 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

    I agree. What's "important parts of life" is subjective, and only the individual can decide what those things are. They can't be dictated by others. That's just a wee bit presumptuous. 

    Maybe I should have said 'important to me'... 

  5. Bob Brookmeyer, Composer

    in Artists

    Posted

    15 hours ago, scooby said:

    David Berger recently posted some thoughts on Brookmeyer:

     

    http://www.suchsweetthundermusic.com/blogs/news/an-uneasy-relationship-thoughts-on-bob-brookmeyer

    Interesting reflection.

    My own interactions with Bob were brief but memorable. I first contacted him by email to query him about some of the darker utterances he posted on a blog he once had. He was trashing musicians left and right, and viciously. I wanted to know why and I challenged him. I received a thoughtful, measured and rather long response.

    Then, in 2004, I had the idea to nominate Bill Finegan for a lifetime achievement award. I lived in the same neighborhood as Dr. Billy Taylor, and ran into him at a restaurant one night and broached this. He was happy to help, and told me to contact the Kennedy Center and use his name. Very nice, for sure, but for some reason I gravitated to reaching out to Brookmeyer, probably because he knew and considered Bill a hero. Long story short: Bill got his award, a plaque from ASCAP, through the efforts of Bob and Johnny Mandel. Also, Bob called Finegan every single day after Bill's wife passed away. So he may have had a dark and angry side, but he had a lot of heart and compassion to honor his heroes. 

    I called him once to tell him he was one of mine... 

  6. Death of the iPod (Everyone's buying vinyl)

    in Audio Talk

    Posted

    16 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

      But, I also get that people live incredibly busy lives these days, and sometimes in order for them to accomplish other things (i.e. family time) they have to squeeze in things like music or podcasts on the fly. 

    I also find it rather sad that people can't (or won't) make an appropriate amount of time to properly take in these things. Being busy is a poor excuse for short-shrifting so many important parts of life. Sigh...

  8. Bob Brookmeyer, Composer

    in Artists

    Posted

    7 hours ago, six string said:

      I acquired his 7 X Wilder album about ten years ago, maybe a little longer and I really liked his piano playing on it.  

    Never even heard of that one. I'll check it out.

    There's also a recording called Standards that he made towards the end that I want to hear. I was just talking to a friend who was his student who thinks that Brook made that perhaps partly to sort of thumb his nose at the people that thought he was too 'out' for them...

  9. Bob Brookmeyer, Composer

    in Artists

    Posted

    4 hours ago, gmonahan said:

     ...but I have to say the later-career Third Stream stuff sort of left me cold.

     

    gregmo

    He went through it, maybe to push himself or out of curiosity, but came back 'in' toward the end. You have to stretch to grow...

  14. Death of the iPod (Everyone's buying vinyl)

    in Audio Talk

    Posted

    5 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

     But, I also have to ask, how much interacting was going on before the portable music player? I rode subways, buses, walked around many towns well before the iPod was a gleam in Steve Jobs' eye. People seemed to pretty much stay to themselves then, as well. Whether they were reading, (or later) working on a laptop, talking on a cell phone, or simply lost in their own thoughts. 

    That's the modern world. I guess I have to accept it, and adjust. There are great things about it, too. (The technology, not the disconnections).

    I'm kind of an idealist, and a bit old-school in some ways...

  19. Where have the great composers gone?

    in Classical Discussion

    Posted

    This is interesting to me, as a composer, on many levels.

    First off, I believe classical music has always been 50-100 years ahead of jazz in harmonic materials. This is doubtless because composers get to work out their ideas with deliberation, while jazz (when done right) is definitely compositional, but more on-the-fly. Of course there is jazz composition, too. I'm speaking here of improvising. 

    For example, jazz players started using devices like 4ths and pentatonics in, roughly, the '60s, borrowing concepts from composers like Berg, Debussy and Bartok worked out years before. It's true that 'great minds think alike', but it took the jazzers a while to get there. The jazz composers got there earlier. Don Redman was into whole-tone scales in the '30s.

    Second, where classical composition took a turn that lost me was back in the early part of the 20th Century with serial music. I realize I am opinionated and perhaps prejudiced, but I found that school generally to be sort of paint-by-numbers. I have to hear something myself, in order for it to come out any good. I had a teacher in college, Ed Summerlin, who told us to make up artificial scales and write off them. Didn't work for me, but maybe I'll try it sometime. Anyway, Berg and Webern wrote very moving music with some of those materials. To me, Schoenberg was kind of dry---like Lennie Tristano. Brilliant, but I need some humanity too. 

    I must admit I stopped listening to classical music, and want to resume in an effort to learn and grow as a composer. So I will check in here once in a while to get ideas and recommendations of who is writing interesting things these days. I never was one to stay stuck in any one period of music, and in my mind put musicians who do that on a lower tier, though I certainly respect their accomplishment and enjoy their playing/writing... 

  20. Irsay in the Morning

    in Classical Discussion

    Posted

    I didn't know where else to post this:

    I love James Irsay. He has been a stalwart of WBAI FM since the '70s. Plays scratchy records of the likes of Joseph Hoffman and other great pianists. Violinists, too. He's very knowledgeable about classical music (a pianist himself) and many other things. He has led a hell of an interesting life, and is a hilarious raconteur and great wordsmith.

    You can hear Irsay in the Morning Fridays from 10 AM-12 PM here: http://www.wbai.org/

     

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