Who are the real criminals?

These days the expression arts funding is equivalent to severe cuts. Deep in their hearts many people believe that the arts are not really necessary, their role and impact on society is negligible and they are the least of our worries. Arts and artists are tolerable at most if they entertain you, while you are trying to get way from having to worry with more serious matters.

Things like crime, criminals and prisons for example, these are serious matters that deserve the society’s undivided attention.

Maybe, just maybe, if more programs like the Carnegie Hall outreach program were taken more seriously and carried out at a more opportune time, society would have less to worry and human kind could preserve better its future. Maybe if more serious arts programs for children were properly funded you would not have to spend as much money fighting crime and criminals...

Watch this CBS report titled "Sing Sing inmates perform, change their lives with music" and be a witness.

Really cool festival

The polar wind brought the Pat Metheny Unity Band to town. “Are you guys freezing out there?” asked Pat. “We are. This is really bad for our fingers but we’ll try to do our best.” And their best they did. 

Only this music could keep me from freezing to death...

A mixture of PMG, PM without G, an astounding Chris Potter, a quartet of trios, duets, Pikasso guitar solos and some spare parts of the Orchestrion thrown in for flavor. Every possible combination in a compact format, a never seen before flexibility in any PM formation. An incredible offer by these virtuoso musicians to the cooled audience of the Cool Jazz Festival. 

Next year I hope they set up an igloo and toss us in there. It’ll be a lot cozier I’m sure... 

“Léo-l’enfant-sourd”

An amazing book by Yves Lapalu “Léo, L’enfant sourd”. A different cartoon character, Léo, a deaf child, moves through a world of sounds. 

Quite moving.

World Listening Day 2012

An intimate and humble contribution to the WLD2012: listening to a documentary titled “A Day in Autumn with Dietrich Fischer-Diskau”. I could hardly breath. 

One voice, two ears. 

The whole purpose is discovering music through the musicians, not the musicians through music, he said...

Happy birthday Nelson Mandela. 

Happy birthday Murray. 

Happy WLD2012 everyone.

Sound Education

An interesting event taking place now in the UK.  Schools of sound for a sound education...

Click here for more information.

Hypermediacy Incorporated

Almost 20 years ago I coined the word hypermediacy to describe an hitherto barely noticeable tendency for the formation of a new language based on computer networking. In those days it was starting to be digitally negotiated (see here or here, for example.) 

Now it seems this is more than an emerging trend and it can even turn into a business. Read all about it here.

The powers of music: two articles

Two articles you do not want to miss. This one titled “Music And Health: 11 Ways Playing And Listening To Music Help Both Body And Mind” on the powers of music and this other “Did Humans Invent Music?” on the origins of this power. 

Enjoy.

Music from the heart

"Joy in the Congo: A musical miracle" is a CBS documentary about the Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra, an orchestra created in the heart of "the poorest country in the world."
Nothing less than a miracle indeed. A documentary worth seeing and worth meditating upon.

 



 Music in the heart of the Congo 

The Sound of the Almost Inaudible

Here’s an experiment I would not have minded carrying myself. Sound hunter-gatherer Chris Watson tries to record the sound of a snail only to find out that snails behave in a slimy, underhand, deceptive way even in front of a BBC camera crew...

Listen

According to an interview published by the NYT, “At the age of 14, inspired by Gene Krupa, [Max Neuhaus], wanted to be the best drummer in the world.” When I was around that age I wanted to be just like Max Neuhaus. I was fascinated by his musical personality and later became inspired by his interest in the sounds of the environment. His ideas about the spatial quality of sound – a subject that continues to fascinate me – also drew my attention.

Long before I joined ranks with the group led by R. Murray Schafer – the group which started the new area of soundscape studies – it was people like Max Neuhaus that, without me even noticing it, quietly drove me into those sonic realities.

Speaking of Neuhaus, listen to this great 1960 interview...


 

Max Mathews

It always sounds strange to use expressions such as “the father of computer music”, but if there’s someone who could quite legitimately claim that distinction, Max Mathews is probably the one. He died today at the age of 84.

Double Concerto for wiper and violin

I was driving my car on my way home and it was raining mildly. I was listening to Berg’s Violin Concerto on the radio and the wipers were moving at the slowest speed, producing a barely noticeable squeaking sound. The concerto was coming into its concluding moments. In the final bars the solo violin plays a very long high G.

As the note goes on I notice that its frequency was a sort of average of the frequency produced by my car’s squeaking wiper sound, a frequency bisector of sorts. The cyclical sound of the wiper was  brought into the score adding an unforeseen harmonic and rhythmic tension to the music.

The result was sometimes hilarious, other times profoundly and strangely serious. My reaction, as I went on driving my car, was quite vivid, I assure you.

I wonder if Berg would have had the humor to incorporate this into his score. I wonder if Cage, specially him, would have appreciated this chance version...

Edition of Contemporary Music

Manfred Eicher came to Estoril to accompany a presentation of the film “Sounds and Silence” by Peter Guyer & Norbert Wiedmer at the International Estoril Film Festival. The film — an extremely interesting play with time — is a sensitive and meticulously produced portrait of Eicher and his ECM project. 

Both deserve more than the sloppy, ill-prepared conversation with Eicher that closed the session. 

ECM and Manfred Eicher remain strong and ever inspiring symbols after many years in this changing and peculiar business. Understanding it is a challenge to both those who wonder how is it possible to successfully marry entrepreneurship with the arts, and those who believe in the value of musical content vis-a-vis pre-defined and often empty or misleading music categories.

Elephant talk

Adrian Belew was in town...

KISS 2010

I just uploaded some pictures of Kiss 2010, - Kyma International Sound Symposium, the conference on Kyma and sound design held in Vienna last September. It was a wonderful and inspiring event which gave me the opportunity to meet with some of the luminaries of the Kyma sound producing platform. 

Kyma is the brainchild of Carla Scaletti an Kurt Hebel (pictured above), the founders of Symbolic Sound. Its users include a group of quite remarkable people, from Joel Chadabe to John Paul Jones.

If the subject interests you, you can become a member of Philosophy of Sound to find out more about this conference and its theme. Just click on the banner on the right. 

Click here to see some pictures of the Symposium.