As many of you know, I am a freelance musician here in New York City. I am playing frequently, so I may as well use this platform to shamelessly promote my own endeavors. On the upper left hand side of your browser bar there should be a link to a new page with my upcoming shows. Hope to see some of you there!
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Art projects are a great way to stimulate the economy. I recently wrote why the money for the NEA, taken out from the senate stimulus bill, should be re-included (which eventually was added back in conference). Darren W. Miller of Madness of Art has a much better post on this than I do. He says:
All of these things are important, but it also good to note the progressive nature of funding the arts economically. First I’ll just describe simple economic theory and the ideas behind progressive taxation and public funding. In Microeconomics, supply and demand is “an economic model based on price, utility and quantity in a market.” In a supply and demand model there are curves for both supply and demand along an x-axis labeled “quantity” and y-axis “price”:  P stands for Price, Q For Quantity, S for Supply and D for Demand As the demand for a good increases the demand curve shifts from D1 to D2 increasing the optimal combination of the good’s price and the amount of the good that is produced. For Luxury items the supply curve is far more steeply sloped, so that when demand goes up, new goods aren’t produced, but rather the price just increases. This is one of the main arguments against Supply-Side economics, because tax cuts at the top of the income spectrum is essentially a tax cut on luxury goods. Consequentially, wealth doesn’t actually trickle down, it just gets pocketed by the already wealthy business owners (who give a paltry portion of their income back to society compared to the poorest of us). On the other hand, goods that are necessities are relatively inelastic, things like food or some kinds of clothing. These things are produced in such a huge quantity that increases in demand don’t affect the price so much. This means that the slope of the supply curve is low, possibly near zero. When goods like this are bought, much of the price of the good is in labor costs. This rewards the greater production of goods and real labor. What does this have to do with art? If we award a grant to an artist or fund their project another way, there will be essentially no overhead costs. Most of the money goes to the production of the work, and in the case of music is used to hire other musicians. Artists, being on the lower end of the income scale, tend to buy less luxury goods and more goods of necessity. This, in turn, encourages greater good production (and a higher GDP) as opposed to inflating luxury prices. A friend from my days in Miami, Andy Rice, and I are starting a slow going project tentatively titled: “Project Symphony“. He and a few of his friends run a web design studio called Miami Design Studio. Andy has a great description of what our goals are:
This will be incredibly useful for players as a central, easily accessible database for sheet music, and has the possibility to grow into a larger community with other functions than just being a music database like IMSLP. Since school has just ended for me, I’ll have plenty of time to start tracking down public domain sheet music that hasn’t already been scanned by imslp. Hopefully this will start online library that doesn’t wholly rely on the work of submittors at imslp, though users are free to submit the works I upload here to there. Apologies to readers, the posting may be a little light in the coming days as I’ll be preparing for and performing my senior recital on Sunday. Afterwards I hope to have some interesting articles on art and the economy and a guest post from Patti Kilroy on the edition of Bach Partitas and Sonatas I have hosted here. For those readers here in New York City, I’ll be playing at the Tenri Cultural Institute at 8:00 pm on Sunday: TENRI CULTURAL INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK Up at the top left hand corner you’ll see home, about and now sheet music. As I continue to host more music I’ll throw it there so it’s still easily accessible and you don’t have a to dredge through all the posts on this blog. Happy playing. A while ago I wrote about consumption and moving beyond post-modernism. In it I discussed how our new e-age is essentially an extension of post-modernism and that the projection of ourselves on social-networking utilities is a hypereality representative of this extension. As a reminder:
In a sense, what people project about themselves is supposed to represent their whole. Fortunately, a profile can only display so much and fails in this attempted representation. (I say fortunately, because think of how dull of a world it would be if an entire person were able to be represented by a web page!) Today in the New York Times science section John Tierny wrote about how consumption of high-class, luxury goods by individuals of wealth is partly an evolutionarily competitive transmission:
 This man looks handsome in his gucci suit, but does that tell you anything about his personality? What he concludes is that nobody in that audience for our signals (prospective mates, friends, etc.) actually care about these consumer objects, asking the reader if they can remember what their colleague or friend wore yesterday. What actually matters are the qualities of personality that can only be discovered over time (even if some things are clear in a simple, introductory conversation).
In this sense, the creation of these profiles on facebook matter very little when people actually take into account who they want to be friends or bff’s with. So why do we make them? Do we really create them out out of the “narcissistic fantasy that everyone else cares about what we [are],” what we did last night or dreamed*? The article leaves us as doomed to our evolutionary baggage and recommends the reader do a cost-benefit analysis of happiness gained vs. money spent on our new Louis-Vuitton bag. In essence he tells us to use our brain. I find the article interesting because the professor interviewed, Dr. Geoffrey Miller, explicitly tells us that transient objects like our hyper-realistic profiles, or Rolex watches are unimportant in the decisions people make about whether to be your friend or not. Ultimately you can conclude that no amount of wealth can buy you social competence, intelligence even if it can buy you the presidency. « Continue reading “Message in What We Profile, But Nobody Cares” » Quick Update for all the violin/viola couples out there. Mozart Duos for Violin & Viola Have fun. I recently applied for a collaborative grant to put on a performance art piece I am writing called The Cure at Troy. I am happy to announce that I have been awarded $2000 to rehearse, promote and perform my work:
Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney based The Cure at Troy on Sophocles’ Philoctetes. The play aims to be a true translation of the text except for the catharsis, which reflects the tumultuous northern-Irish conflict between British Protestants and Irish Catholics. This collaborative project will create a performance piece where music and acting come together to reflect the emotional content of Heaney’s work, and update its meaning to our current post-9/11 mindset, where cycles of violence create a seemingly unending threat to our way of life. The work features ten parts, four actors and 6 musicians. The actors are scored as representing Neoptolomus, Philoctetes and two chorus members. As for the musicians, there are 2 cellists and violinists, a violist and a pianist. The movements are subtitled as follows:
As the project progresses, I’ll keep this blog up to date about anything interesting that’s going on. After the work is premiered, I’ll host a recording and (hopefully) a video. Additionally I’ll provide analysis of my work for those interested. « Continue reading “Grant Awarded to Put on The Cure At Troy” » In today’s New York Times, an Op-Ed by Christopher Francese discussed how it was stupid to put latin on diplomas since no-one can understand it anyways:
In a way, this struck home as analogous to one of my chief concerns with art music composed in the past 100 years. Music has taken on a very complex form at the expense of simply communicating the virtual feelings it is supposed to represent. When most lay-listeners are approached by modern & some post-modern music they get turned off by the sounds written, which are (truth-be-told) a brilliant combination of pitches. The problem is that hearing the brilliance of the work is something that only extremely experienced listeners can hear, and likely only if they have a score to read as well. Having discussions with friends who have perfect pitch and incredible dictation skills, I’ve learned that none of them are able to hear the rows in 12-tone music. It is very important that music isn’t limited by shunning the complex, we would have never gotten beethoven’s 9th symphony, the Art of Fugue, Peter Grimes, or Wagnerian Opera if we did. I find it sad, though, that we have placed greater value on music being elitest and convoluted as opposed to music being able to express feeling to common listeners. like Mr. Francese says, “Why, then, celebrate [music] that prizes grandiosity over communication?” The Bach Partitas and Sonatas are must plays for every violinist, whether they are ancient, grumpy old soloists or young musicians who have achieved the technical proficiency to handle the works. These work’s musical depth is profound, and the famous Ciaccona might be the greatest work written for a solo violin. Fortunately since it is played, and studied intensely by every professional violinist (and even most violists), we have a plethora of incredible recordings. Some of the notable ones include Milstein’s, Grumiaux’s, and Heifetz’s (though Heifetz’s recording is extremely unconventional, whereas the other two are more traditional). (Really weird huh?) I’ll try and see if I can get a violinist to peruse over the parts that I am re-hosting from IMSLP and talk about the quality of the editions. Additionally, I’ll see if I can get an early music expert to discuss early-music-style recordings. Bach Partitas & Sonatas:
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