After the smashing success of Unsilent Night in Tucson, I’ve decided to bring Phil Kline’s ambient Christmas masterpiece to the streets of Baltimore. This year’s performance will take place on Friday, December 8 at 7pm. We’ll meet at the Washington Monument (600 N Charles St) near the Peabody Conservatory and will follow a route that will take us N on Charles St, W on Eager so we can wave […]
Late yesterday afternoon after my clinic, I hopped on the T over to JP and made some noise with Tim. Microtones, microtones, microtones. Bob’s piece is called Ajax is all about attack and, much to Tim’s credit, is in fact related to the famous Ajax Amsterdam football team—a stimulus that Bob found in a short story by Jim Shepard. In the 1960s, Ajax became famous for a concept […]
I’ve been on the road since October 7. It is November 8 and I’m in Boston, staying downtown right on the edge of Chinatown. The 37-day tour, which took me through the mid-Atlantic and New England states is finally winding down and will conclude this Sunday (actually, Saturday for me because of the Microtonal Society concert at MIT). Tomorrow I give a clinic […]
“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You wil get an enormous reward. You will have created […]
The Best American series has been around for some time now but this is the first one I’ve picked up. Eggers has assembled a wonderful, well-balanced anthology of writing that spans fiction, comics, current events, religion, and lists like the “Best American Fake Headlines” (courtesy of The Onion), the “Best American First Sentences of Novels of 2005,” and my personal favorite […]
“For the first twenty-four hours, the pirate station broadcasts the sound of someone coughing nervously. An august beginning. It’s not the dead air of the rural FM dial. It’s someone coughing nervously. Much nervousness at the pirate station, and thus much nervous coughing. The next Tuesday a jazz band […]
From: Brian Sacawa
Subject: Missing Pages!
Date: November 1, 2006 2:59:14 AM EST
To: Trade_GeneralInterest
Dear Houghton Mifflin, […]
With the Boston Microtonal Society concert coming up in less than two weeks, I’ve been busy getting Bob Hasegawa’s Ajax is all about attack under my fingers. I’m always surprised at how difficult it feels to learn a new quarter-tone piece. For me, it’s often like learning to play the instrument all over again—the response […]
Yesterday I gave a recital/clinic at a high school in Burlington, VT, which meant there was no evening concert. This left me with the entire rest of the day free to go explore and acquire some new things. The first stop was a little used book store, where I found a hardcover copy of Paul […]