Matt's Blog

My friend Matt, who is a good source for musical recommendations and news, started a blog. Check it out here:

http://quetzlcoatlcatfish.blogspot.com

In my own news I just got back to London from Bruges, where I caught Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time performed by the Ensemble Explorations of the Concertbegouw, as well as a lot of good beer, good chocolate, and very pretty medieval canals and buildings.

The quintet is almost finished, then it's on to writing for orchestra.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe Christmas/Hannukah/(insert holiday here)

Concerts!

The first UK show was a success! Pieces were performed by the Stranded Ensemble, our newly founded graduate composers' ensemble at King's, to a full room who were very happy. Matias Hancke and Teodoro Cromberg also pulled out some sweet electronics with their project Senales e intersecciones. They have some shows in Rome next week if you're there.

At the intermission George Benjamin came up and said he really liked my piece and the idea behind it (88 was performed) and said that I should write more of them. Then after the second half he came up again with more ideas for it. I said, "you're thinking of writing one, aren't you?" and he said, "yes, I really am." That was really exciting. Messiaen's favorite student, Britain's superstar composer, likes my stuff. AWESOME.

Today was "Composing Through Art" at the National Gallery, with presentations and workshops from both art historians and composers. It's hard to convincingly say there was an instant change in all of my art perception, but there were a few profound realizations that are going to really influence the way I look at renaissance painting. And hearing Graham Fitkin and George Fenton speak and getting to ask questions was very cool.

Tomorrow I'm either seeing Sigur Ros or seeing Strauss's Elektra at the Royal Opera House. Either one sounds pretty good to me. Then Saturday is a concert from the Ionian Singers, in Dulwich, which you should really come to, because they're shooting for 100 to keep the venue happy. It's a really cool program of Sibelius, Holst, Debussy, Ravel, Faure, and others. Info is here.

Off to work!

Reykjavik

Has an awesome scene. And the people there are outrageously nice. There is a record store there called 12 Tonar. It has cd players and couches all around the store, and the guys working there will recommend a bunch of stuff to listen to, then sit down with you and say "check out this track" and tell you all about the bands. I picked up an album by a band/project called Klive (I was unfortunately on a pretty tight budget, there was a lot of good stuff), and wrote down a few other bands to check out. Upon getting home and looking up Klive's website, I could see why the guy who suggested them smiled when I picked it. I don't know if he's in the band or not, but his picture is on the cover of one of their past records.

Similarly, I went up to a guy in a Converge shirt and more or less said "tell me about Icelandic hardcore." He went on to give me a history of their scene, walk around the store (this was a different, slightly larger one) picking out records, and put them on the store's sound system. I settled on a gem of Icelandic metal record called At The Borders of Arcadia, by a band called Celestine. Apparently their drummer is now working as a full time composer in the classical sense, so I've got to look up some of that too.

The scenery in the country, and the rest of the city outside of record stores, are both pretty unbelievable too, and the people's reputation of being warm and welcoming is well deserved. While we were walking around town someone actually honked, slowed down, and pointed out the window that my friend had dropped his glove.  In short, go to Iceland.

Here are some music pages:

Klive

Kira Kira

Celestine 

The Behavior of Clouds

New piece for violin and viola. Check it out:

Sorry I don't know how to post .pdfs on here. But there'll be a website soon enough.

Ionian Singers

I joined a choir that rehearses near Waterloo and does a lot of awesome music. They're called The Ionian Singers, and their website is here:

www.ioniansingers.co.uk

We have a show in Dulwich on 22 November, and you should come. Here's the program:

Sibelius - Rakastava, Op. 14

Holst - The Evening Watch, Op. 43 No. 1

Salter - Nocturne

Ravel - Trois Chansons

Debussy - Deux Arabesques (solo harp)

Vaughn Williams - Three Shakespeare Songs

Holst - Choral Hymns from The Rig Veda, Op. 26

Tournier - Etude de concert and Lolita la danseuse (solo harp)

Faure - Madrigal, Op. 35

Salter - English Folk Song arrangements: Cold Blows the Wind and O Soldier, Soldier

Really fun stuff, and it'll be my first time singing tenor.

Concepts

I just attended a god-awful concert, with great players, a supportive audience, and a cool venue. These things do not make up for bad music. So I am going to rant.

HAVING A CLEVER IDEA DOES NOT MEAN YOU'VE WRITTEN SOMETHING GOOD

All of the pieces performed tonight were driven (I use the term lightly) by single ideas. The first was to combine piano in unison with recorded speech. Maybe this would make for an interesting part of a larger piece, but on its own it gets tedious quickly, and points to a lack of ability, creativity, or follow through on the composer's part.

The "concept" of the next piece was to play some white noise over pianissimo (very quiet) instruments, with silence in between. Again, maybe this is a "cool sound," but after the third or fourth silence, as the next bout of static with quietly useless melodies an audience member has either a) figured out that this is the whole piece, b) is hoping something else is going to happen soon, or c) both. In the case of A, if you're the composer you've failed, and quit immediately. With B, if something else doesn't eventually happen, you have an unhappy audience member. You can figure C out for yourself.

The next of the evening continued this way. One of the pieces was a descending chromatic scale (over and over again, at various speeds, for about five minutes), for cello, electric guitar, and keyboard synth. Just because you've added electronics doesn't mean you've written something good. How the hell is "contemporary music," which is supposed to push boundaries, so far behind? This stuff was okay when it was being invented, but let's get real here. Listen to some Aphex Twin (or Phillipe Manoury, or Matt Burtner, or any good rock, for god's sake) and keep your experiments to yourself (unless that's the point AND you know what you're doing). Give me something compelling. Here's an idea:

Get an idea, then compose to completely destroy that idea, to force people to figure out for themselves what it is you're doing.

Here's another:

Write something that sounds good.

Maybe if you combine those two ideas you'll make some art. Or maybe this is wrong and you'll totally fail. If you do, hopefully it will be a complete enough failure to elicit some booing and shouting from the audience, maybe even to have a performer get punched if you've done things right. Anything would be better than sitting quietly through an evening of this to watch another composer's undeserved bow. Please excuse me, I've got music to write.

Parallels

Some people have said that composition is a lot like cooking. Maybe they're right, or maybe not. I'm not too concerned with it, I just wanted an excuse to share how awesome the garlic/spicy asian chile pepper/regular pepper/olive oil/onion sauce my roommate and I invented yesterday is. There's a big bowl of it marinating some meat in my fridge, and I am getting more and more excited the closer dinnertime gets.

Also, check out this website:

www.bugbrand.co.uk

Any ideas for a quintet?