A new look at composition and music-making.

To all my colleagues in Musica Nova, today it begins. Wednesday and Friday, 1:45-3:30 in 514 and Kilbourne Hall, respectively.

Also check out the October 18th Concert Page. 

You need to bring nothing but your bad selves, your instruments, and a notepad or notebook for taking some personal notes. oh, and toys, if you got’em. like, you know, noisemakers. It’s all good.

So, by the afternoon of October 11th, you’ll have a bunch of new tools with which to make music, and you won’t even know how it happened. Be very very scared. (just kidding)

I’ll give you all the basic principles in rehearsal, then i’ll post some of them here tomorrow afternoon as well. I just want you to hear them and work with them before seeing them in writing.

Want to hear what sort of music SoundPainting™ can produce?
Listen to this…

It’s from an Improvisation concert at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute last summer.

There were other completely unique and organic improvisations as well which were not led with SoundPainting™ , but rather from expanded listening.

Listen to them here…

Steve Reich Week-long Concert Party in London. Next Stop, Carnegie Hall in October.

One week, One big big party. Steve Reich turned 70. Here are some rehearsal pix of the prep for Daniel Variations, Steve’s new piece about Daniel Pearl, the tragically-killed journalist in Iraq. There is so much to the story, both Daniel Pearl’s, and the composition itself. Read more about it here. Brad and I felt privileged as we always do to play the music and to be part of the history-making. Several standing-ovations later, and simply teary-eyed from from being part of some great music-making, we’re once again reminded that this is a master of form and of rhythm, of simplicity and complexity all at once, and at 70 years, making some of the best music of his career. Let no one tell you it’s unemotional or at the same time unintellectual. That’s ignorance.

We weren’t able to nick a recording, but we hope you’ll hear it soon, in fact we hope we record it soon. The 1st pic is from The Cave, the second from the London Underground. Pics from Ben Rubin. Thanks, Ben