Playing for Ben Lear @ Monkey Town in Williamsburg

Ben Lear was a fellow student in NYU’s music program. He’s playing at Monkey Town tonight with me and three other string players as back up to his band. Here are the details:

Ben Lear

7/27/2009 8:00 PM at Monkey Town 58 N 3rd St (btw. Kent & Wythe), Williamsburg, New York 11211 [...]

Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies 1-19

This post is for all of the pianists out there. These works are famous for how gnarly they are, technically. In them, pianists often discover how much bigger Liszt’s hands are than everyone else’s (save NBA stars and Sergei Rachmaninoff). I’ve put links to recordings of 2 and 13 below the fold. Here is what [...]

Circles and Lines at Le Poisson Rouge, Tuesday, September 1st @ 10PM

On Tuesday September First, the composer group Circles and Lines, will be performing at Le Poisson Rouge. What is great about this performance, other than the other four composers all being awesome, is that my piece, The Cure at Troy will be on the program. A description of the work and some of the logistics [...]

Brahms Sextets, Op. 18 and Op. 36

Here are recordings of the Brahms Sextets and the sheet music and parts to them. Note: I had to degrade the quality of Op. 36′s score a little bit because the original file from IMSLP was 27 megabytes. I turned it into a greyscale and lowered the ppi.

Brahms Sextet Op. 18

Brahms Sextet [...]

Aesthetic Experiences: The Exploration of the Voice and Electronic Music Done Well

Last night I was invited to see a show that is part of Teatro IATI’s Performing Arts Marathon. The program was made up of two electro-acoustic acts Sabrina Lastman and Bora Yoon. Both used elements of electronics in concordance with their voice, though Ms. Lastman’s fell more on the acoustic side of the spectrum.

Ms. [...]

Pacifica Quartet Review, 7/15/09

The Pacifica Quartet has mastered playing as a unit.

Last night I saw the Pacifica Quartet perform at NYU’s Frederick Loewe Theater. As a quartet on the younger side of the classical music business they showed why they are Musical America’s ensemble of the year and Grammy winners for best chamber music performance. Their [...]

Brahms Clarinet Quintet Op. 115

The Clarinet Quintet was one of Brahms’ last works. It is incredibly rich and brooding. The first movement reminds me somewhat of his Eb Viola sonata, in that it is heavily nostalgic and longing. Here is Wikipedia’s description of the work:

The piece consists of four movements.

Allegro in B minor, in 6:8 time Adagio [...]

God Bless You Mr. Schoenberg, Pt. 2

Yesterday I spoke about how Schoenberg’s pieces and philosophical writings have started us on a journey to have our ears judge works by their thematic content rather than whether all the dissonances are handled like Bach would have wanted them too. Today, I wanted to post some music (better than JT) where the heavy use [...]

God Bless You Mr. Schoenberg Pt. 1

JT's music was influenced by a cultural progression started in large part by Arnold Schoenberg

Two years ago when Justin Timberlake released his latest album FutureSex/LoveSounds, I absolutely hated it, mostly because of how much I don’t like teen pop albums but also because the big single off of it, SexyBack, sounded like the [...]

Boccherini Sonata for Viola and Cello

The quality of this sheet music is a little low, but I thought it might be interesting to put up this Sonata – Duo by Boccherini because his music is ridiculous and something good for a viola cello duo at a gig.

Boccherini Viola & Cello Sonata