I’m pleased to announce some big changes to this site and my online persona, as it were. After many years, I’ve taken to heart some suggestions to start making my photos and music available for anyone to own and have in their very own home. Here is the album cover for my first released CD, now available at CDBaby.com and shortly listed on iTunes, Amazon and others. I have others in the queue as well. Also, all my photos are getting transferred to a lab where you can get greeting cards, prints, framed prints, even framed canvas murals of them. I have sent over 100 photos from the Philippines so far and the rest are coming in the next few weeks. You can click nearly any photo on my site to go to my online gallery here.

Thanks to everyone for being a loyal audience and I hope you’ll find these improvements as great an idea as I do.

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

going to be gradually reworking this site over the coming weeks

starting with the way i share music

Click here for photos and some comments about this year’s fantastic festival in downtown Chicago.

If you missed it 2 years ago, here’s the video of that festival.

Here’s something novel done a couple hundred years ago, to make you think.

a year or so ago i made a quick and dirty graphic for visualizing when many of the famous composers lived.

I did this because i often found myself wondering at which time certain new forms of music came to be. most novices would not realize how recently many “classical” composers actually lived.

anyway, it is here:

http://andrew.fm/composers/

i just upgraded wordpress to the latest. i was coming from quite an old version. amazing how truly old something is in the tech world but that is really just a couple years old.

i’m thinking about how to release more music updates in an easier fashion. not sure it will be through this blog or not. but anyway.

might as well make this test post somewhat useful, so here’s a little music sketch from earlier this summer. super short but super fun. full orchestra:

click here

My uncle just sent me this email:

Hi Andrew!

You told me once — but I forgot — which of the Mahler symphonies you hold in general high regard.  Would you recite that preference to me again?

Any particular recording?

You will be hard pressed to find any more complex of thematic and orchestrational development than the music contained in his 5th and 6th symphonies.

Also, the sheer beauty of the slow movements of these two symphonies is without rival in the orchestral literature.

They are both very long, so consider listening to movements 3 through 5 of the 5th, and then movements 3 and 4 of the 6th to get your feet wet. When given a chance to really listen to the intricacies of his textures, I guarantee you will be blown away. They are not background music.

I have a recording of the Czech Philharmonic performing the 6th. I have a few recordings of the 5th, including (I think) one of Berlin with Abbado which was my first introduction to the 5th.

The grand sonata form of the final movement of the 6th is in the opinion of many contemporary composers the greatest achievement in all the symphonic literature. It is a whopping 30-minute universe in its own right that takes motivic development in directions not seen since Bach.  In fact, the Brandenburgs were a major influence on Mahler. Unlike most late-Romantic composers, Mahler’s music is extensively contrapuntal within its gigantic orchestrations.

These two symphonies are entirely instrumental and are an excellent contrast to the choral works he created in other symphonies. The 5th and 6th are mainstays of professional symphony programs each year. As you can see, I am unable to stop writing about them. I have listened to each hundreds of times, and still return to hear new themes and complexities I’ve not picked up on before.

They are genuinely grandiose. Enjoy!!

Here we have Lollapalooza:  I had the live music phenomenon of my life a couple weeks ago in Chicago, at this very amazing festival.  The city and Perry Farrell did an extraordinary job; a fantastic weekend.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jane’s Addiction,  Ben Folds,  Snoop Dog,  Other Lives,  Fleet Foxes,  Cold War Kids,  Thievery Corporation,  Manchester Orchestra,  The Decemberists,  Andrew Bird,  Of Montreal,  and Santigold!

A few of the many bands I heard for the first time, over only three days.

For me, it was Jane’s Addiction that really catapulted what was an already-astounding festival into something truly rare.  Perry Farrell (creator of the festival back in 1991 as the Jane’s farewell tour), showed tens of thousands of stunned spectators how true performance art is delivered, as he resurrected their famous music with fresh authenticity — and utilizing all the band’s original members!  This powerhouse of rock gods, whose work has spawned countless other “projects” like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Porno For Pyros, featured near magic with the likes of David Navarro and the others.  At one point, a helicopter circled low over the huge audience, lit oddly to resemble a true unidentified object, as it shined intense, ultra-focused spot beams down into the crowd.  This and so many other nuances made the 90-minute show one of the more significant events I’ll probably see.

I was asked recently by a rather educated and artistic gentleman what chamber music is.  I had been throwing around the term, not realizing that a majority of the population is unaware of its meaning.

As I will be posting some chamber music soon, I thought to clarify what it is.

Wikipedia has a nice entry on the term, but I define it more loosely:  Chamber music is simply written for any combination of instruments, usually symphonic, but assembled in smaller groups than a full orchestra, often for 3 – 8 players.

Popular chamber music ensembles consist of:

the string quartet

woodwind quintet

brass quartet and quintet

X trio or X quintet, where “X” could be any instrument, and the others usually strings, such as a piano trio (piano, violin, cello), or clarinet quintet (clarinet plus string quartet), etc.

Wikipedia broadly suggests that a “chamber orchestra” can size up to 50 musicians… which I’d instead consider to be a full orchestra (the normal size of a symphony in Mozart’s time, for example, was quite small compared to the orchestras of today.. yet it was still a true “symphony orchestra”).  In any case, chamber orchestras probably don’t quite fit into the common perception of chamber music, which can be played “in any chamber”, or room.

It is worth noting that chamber music can be among the most expressive and complicated in the repertoire.  Indeed, size does not matter in the world of music, and chamber sounds can be as bold and moving as the grandest of philharmonic orchestras.

Some of the string quartets of Beethoven are notoriously difficult to both play and to understand, even for modern ears.  Yet also, some chamber music has such a profound influence, it pushes through a society like wildfire until everyone has digested it. The famous music used in Oliver Stone’s movie “Platoon” was originally scored for string quartet by Samuel Barber.  The uniquely scored and haunting Quartet For the End of Time by Messiaen demonstrates just how intimate a small collection of instruments can be, as the composer chose the medium to express his experiences as a POW in WW II.

The phenomenal Sonata for Violin and Cello by Ravel shows how only two instruments, when treated for the full capacity of their range and potential, can produce mind-bending music to rival anything else ever written, ever.

And of course, the solo Cello suites by none other than J.S. Bach remain a testament to the power of the single voice.

Chamber music is a great example of how it is often possible to do more with less.

I have not read Elizabeth Gilbert’s highly successful book, Eat, Pray, Love, but her TED lecture on the struggles and magic of creative effort is something any artist should watch.  Click here to watch the lecture — it contains a lot of very interesting trivia about the relationship between society and creative accomplishment, and she discusses her own frustrations with writing.   Highly recommend.

(It would seem, from the reviews at Amazon.com, that her book has a polarizing following; people either love it or hate it.)

Click here for another TED lecture I really enjoyed… a lot.