Sounds Like Now

First stop Chile, next the world!

Brian — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:57:22 +0000

I got an email today from Art of the States letting me know that they’d put together a show focusing on doubles / dualities that included my recording Philip Glass’s Piece in the Shape of a Square. Apparently, this is a radio show that’s been shopped around to international broadcasters. The first to pick it up was Radio Beethoven FM in Santiago, Chile. Pretty cool. Wonder where it’ll end up next!

In Praise of Bags In Trees

Brian — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:58:57 +0000

Once upon a time, before I was curating the Contemporary Museum’s Mobtown Modern Music Series, I had an anti-environmentalist alter ego who curated the satirist blog Bags In Trees. To refresh your memory, Bags In Trees is / was a website dedicated to showcasing the beauty of the omnipresent plastic accessories that adorn the trees of Baltimore, MD. It was a wonderful time. There were even a cast of characters—most notably the villains Ian Frazier and Bette Midler, resplendent with her meddling New York Restoration Project cronies. BIT seems to live on in however dwindling a capacity thanks to Charissa Costa, but I think the video above gives us a chance to reflect on just how beautiful the Bags In Trees experiment truly was.

Baltimore Magazine’s Best of Baltimore 2010

Brian — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:03:55 +0000

Some really amazing news came in the mail a couple weeks ago, when I found out that Baltimore Magazine had named me the MVP Arts Explorer in their 2010 Best of Baltimore issue. Here’s the blurb:

As both musician (playing sax) and curator (booking the Contemporary’s excellent Mobtown Modern Music Series), Brian Sacawa has helped raise the profile of new music in Baltimore. And folks are still buzzing about Rite of Swing, Mobtown’s jazzy take on Stravinsky’s Rite, which closed out its season in May.

I’m extremely honored to have been recognized and especially to be included in the company of BMA Director Doreen Bolger and Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance Executive Director J. Buck Jabaily. And obviously, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing in Baltimore without having been embraced and incredibly supported by Irene Hofmann and the Contemporary Museum. Speaking of that, look for Mobtown Modern’s season announcement coming very soon…

Talk and Action

Brian — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:47:32 +0000

Franco, the Mexican Macbeth, raised his hand again, and began quoting from Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” about the differences between science and the arts. “If you want to build a bridge as a civil engineer, or do physics, you can’t question all of the assumptions at the same time,” Franco said. “It’s not that there’s not creativity in the hard sciences. It’s that you can’t afford the consequences of getting the bridge wrong, because it falls.”

- From “In Training: Leaders-to-Be” by Ben McGrath in The New Yorker (Aug 2, 2010)

Call me Coach

Brian — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:56:01 +0000

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Brian — Fri, 21 May 2010 05:53:42 +0000

I’m kind of really in love with this thing. It’s Amik, the mascot beaver of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. I don’t care if Flavorwire named it one of the worst Olympic mascots. The Amik is awesome.

Kids with bikes

Brian — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:03:43 +0000

If the title of this post made you think of “Kids With Guns” by Gorillaz, that was on purpose. Maybe it might also be one of the first things that came to mind if you were asked to imagine the youth of Oakland, CA. Fortunately for us, we have this amazing microdocumentary showing a group of kids doing something extremely positive and cool that’s centered around bicycles. Gotta have more stuff like this and more people telling these stories.

Driving stats for spring tour 2010

Brian — Sun, 09 May 2010 21:18:24 +0000

Last Friday, I got back from a 32-day tour with The U.S. Army Field Band. The trip took us through Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, West Virginia, and Virginia. The band played 29 concerts and my saxophone quartet gave recitals / clinics at Youngstown State University, the University of Illinois, and Bowling Green State University.

Though you can always ride the bus on tours, you also have the option to drive your own car—you just have to have someone to ride with you and pay for gas out of your own pocket. For me, the freedom of not being confined to the bus departure times and having the ability to be more mobile at various stops—especially on days off—makes it extremely worthwhile despite the gas expense.

The photo above is my GPS showing the final totals from the trip. I’m glad Natalie thought to reset the thing when we left on the first day because it’s pretty neat to see. For the record, I have no recollection of driving 86mph! I’m generally not a very meticulous records-keeper though when it comes to certain things—cycling power files and tanks of gas—I’m actually a little obsessive. I’ve got a record of every single tank of gas I’ve ever put into our 2008 Honda FIT. So just a few more numbers from the tour: we averaged 32.06 MPG for the entire trip; and spent $445.01 on gas. Money extremely well spent, IMO.

Welcome to the new website

Brian — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:29:40 +0000

I’ve been saying that I’ve wanted to redesign my site for a while now and, well, I finally got around to it! It’s a little sad to finally bid farewell to the old site (front page pictured below) made by my friends Steve and Chief from Fishbucket, but it was time for a little face lift.

The old blog that had been doubling as an interim website will continue to be parked right where it is so all previous items that were linked to on that space will remain in tact. However, no further updating will occur there. News, updates, race reports, and gratuitous cat photos will now appear in this space. Click here to subscribe to the ‘News & Updates” feed. All insightful, inciteful, and “reductionist” blogging about musical matters now takes place over at Sound Directions on the Baltimore Sun’s Charm City Current website. Yes, I’ve gone corporate. You can subscribe to that feed by clicking here.

Definitely let me know if there are some things that aren’t working on the site or if there are things you’d like to see that I’ve forgotten or left out. Any and all feedback is most welcome. Oh, and if you know of any good audio player plugins (that actually look good) for WordPress, please let me know. And, seriously, I will pay someone if they can make me a player that looks like the one that Topspin uses.

Finally, thanks to my lovely wife Molly and my friend Rob McIver for the photos that appear in the slideshow on the front page. (N.B. If you look close in the mirror photo you can see my father-in-law.) And also thanks to my good friend and cycling buddy Myke Nahorniak for his help with some coding.