One of my favorite discoveries in recent years is composer Gloria Coates. I first heard of her via an interview she gave on the Naxos American Classics podcast in promotion of a recently released recording of her 15th Symphony (along with two other works) by Naxos. I was taken not only with what she said [...]
I have recently begun listening to Marc Maron’s smart and funny WTF podcast. Yesterday I heard an episode in which comedian Janeane Garofalo was his guest (also smart and funny). Near the end of the conversation, Garofalo brought up the question, “What is an artist?” Maron responded by saying, “To me, an artist is somebody [...]
I have more thoughts on this that I haven’t sorted out (and all the responses – many interesting one – I got on the original post were at Facebook/MySpace), but in the meanwhile, here’s a fascinating Wikipedia entry on “Timbral Listening”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbral_Listening
Timbral Listening
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Timbral Listening is the process of actively and correctly listening to [...]
I first read this article about improvisation by Sonny Sharrock about 20 years ago, and it always stuck with me. It’s interesting to revisit it now. I find it just as fascinating. By the way, I don’t agree with his statement that 90% of Jazz is improvised. It’s much much much less than that (20% [...]
Back in the summer of 2006, I was asked by the now retired e-zine Harmonium to write about a “Perfect Pop Song” of my choosing. Looking at it now, I could ditch the 4th and maybe even 5th paragraphs. Anyhow, here’s what I submitted:
The phrase “Perfect Pop Song” evokes a lot of auditory images in [...]
