Small Updates

The semester is off to a very good start, though at this point there's a significant amount of administrative/organizational work on the docket. In addition to me, there are five student accompanists working in the dance division this semester, and if the last two days are any indication, we're going to be making some righteously good noise. Just the requisite schedule-wrangling etc. etc...

News!

1) The recording session with Stuart and Sylvia Smith went off very well-- Stuart was able to give me some wonderful insight into his work in general and into Links No. 3 in particular, and we put the whole thing in the computer in about 2-1/2 hours. Stuart and Sylvia host an excellent three-day intensive program every summer for anyone who'd like to get a similar in-depth coaching from Stuart on his music (without the attendant pressures of a recording session)-- this year it runs June 2-4 in Baltimore. You may very well see me there.

2) My KSU colleague Joan Meggitt has a blog up for her Cleveland-based company, Antaeus Dance. You should go check it out-- both the blog and the company. Joan's work is excellent!

3) The new Gutbucket album was released last week or so, and it's really killer.  You can order CDs or top-quality vinyl from their website.  Check them out too!

4) My next performance is at the Akron Art Museum on February 8 at 2pm-- my first concert as a member of the Akros Percussion Collective.  I'll be part of a quartet performing John Cage's Living Room Music, and I'll also be performing Stuart Smith's solo percussion/speech piece Family Portraits: Delbert. It's free, it's fun, and you're a very short drive away from Angel Falls Coffee Company for a beverage and snack afterwards. Couldn't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon...

Thoughts on music, straight from Thelonious Monk...

...via Todd Reynolds. Ah, interconnectedness.

Enjoy. I'm off to Baltimore tomorrow for record Links No. 3 with Stuart and Sylvia Smith.  Cheers!

Some uplift, presented with a simple, clever concept

Sincerity + concision = pretty awesome stuff.

Betty Freeman (1922-2009)

Arts patron and new-music champion Betty Freeman passed away a couple days ago.  She had pancreatic cancer (as did Morton Feldman). She was 86.

Few people had the depth impact in the arts community that she did. She commissioned a huge variety of pieces, provided annual grants to several particularly important composers, and has had many works dedicated to her.  (A full list of those commissions/grants/dedications is available here, thanks to the American Music Center.)  Alan Rich, Norman Lebrecht, Joshua Kosman, and Mark Swed all have lovely and detailed remembrances of her; please go and read at least one of them, if not all.  (She was also quite a good photographer-- she took some classes with Ansel Adams-- and Norman Lebrecht has an extensive gallery of her photos of composers and artists at www.lebrecht.co.uk.  Search for "Betty Freeman" and you'll be richly rewarded.)

It's not just the magnitude of her support that's notable, but the manner in which she exercised it.  First, she followed her personal tastes above all else-- trendiness and groupthink didn't enter into her decisions regarding which composers and works to support.  (One could argue that her support actually directed new-music groupthink, but she supported such a wide range of composers and works that she opened up opportunities for large swaths of the field, rather than people working in a particular style or school.)  One of her earliest recipients was Harry Partch, who Freeman began supporting when he was practically destitute in the mid-1960s, and whose music and personal demeanor showed no concern for prevailing winds of fashion.  The salons that she gave in her home were often the means by which young composers were able to jumpstart their careers.  I could go on, but the links above lead to better writers with more first-hand information; please read their remembrances.

To say that they don't make them like her anymore is to imply that they made them like her before she existed.  She was unique, and will be sorely missed.