For my students who can’t get to me by email (or are email-phobic), please post your paragraph assignments to the “comments” area below. Thanks.

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ARCANA IV

Friday, November 6, 2009

The new book, Arcana IV, has been released. This is the fourth volume of the series Arcana: Musicians on Music, conceived and edited by John Zorn.

Last year John was nice enough to ask me to contribute something to this installment. After wracking my brain for a while, I decide to write an essay called Why Glass?. I attempt to answer the question of why I have devoted myself to glass as the prime physical material in my acoustic work, as well as the main sound source for much of my electronic work.

Here is an excerpt from my essay:

As we all know, glass does indeed break. That in itself is part of its charm and part of the adventure. It’s also one reason glass is particularly well suited to improvised and otherwise aleatoric music. It does break, but you cannot count on it doing so (unless a hammer is used, of course). The few times I have tried to break things on cue, they have stubbornly refused to do so. That is why after all this time I am still always surprised when something does break. The material seems to have a mind of its own. One of the benefits of using glass in the less regulated kinds of music is that when one instrument does break, there are then two or more new instruments. Instrumental mitosis! All the way until the smallest shards are used for glass maracas.

This volume also contains wonderful writings by Derek Bailey, Paul Dresher, Shelley Hirsch, James Fei, and many others. Hopefully you can find it in your local bookstore. If not, go here, or here.

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A Break

Friday, November 6, 2009

I am taking a break from adding to this blog right now. What with teaching at Bard College, composing, performing, and co-ordinating the care of my 90 year old father, not to mention overseeing the archiving and sales of my father’s voluminous artwork, I have little time to think about blogging.

But there is still plenty to see/hear here. Please click around  to the various pages and to my previous posts. There are plenty of audio files, pictures, and some video of which to avail yourself.

I’ll be back blogging eventually. Thanks for checking in.

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NewBorn Trio in Kosovo, June 2009

Monday, September 21, 2009

Photos here.

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Merce Cunningham, 1919-2009

July 27, 2009

Merce with my glass instruments, May 2008

He will be missed.

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Crazy

July 2, 2009

Oy. I have been too crazy busy to do any posting.
I did have a great time in Kosovo, though. If you’d like to see photos go here.
Once I get this Art of Memory show up and running, I’ll have more time.

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NewBorn Debut

June 1, 2009

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NewBorn Trio @ Cornelia St. Cafe. This Wednesday.
Recorded four days ago:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Katie Down : glass, strings, and wind.
Miguel Frasconi : glass and small instruments.
Jeffrey Lependorf : shakuhachi and global flutes.
Getting ready for [...]

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Yimpa 1978

May 23, 2009

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I just found this total gem of a piece from an old recording of YIMPA, the York Improvisation Agreement, from a concert in 1978. Yimpa was the performing ensemble of the improvisation class at York University, Toronto, taught (even now) by the amazing pianist Casey Sokol. I was in this group for all 4 years [...]

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Leigh Evans

May 22, 2009

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from TRACES (May 15-21, 2009, NYC):

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[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Review

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Benedetti/Frasconi

May 21, 2009

Here is one of my father’s woodcuts, a color version of a print used to illustrate a poem of Benedetti’s in Unstill Life:

Still Life, woodcut by Antonio Frasconi

Here is a video of Benedetti reading a poem about The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos)

Here is some of my father’s work on the same subject:

from Los Desaparecidos, woodcut by [...]

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