The Best of the Rest: 7-26-08

Since this is new, a reminder: These are all blogs that are NOT on my lists of the top 50 Classical Blogs. However, since those lists are merely about links, not about quality, I'm doing my part to expose lesser-linked blogs to the bright light of ... my readers?

1. Mahler Owes Me Ten Bucks: Chantal explains why she has this blog, how it is different from her professional reviews, and why her legs turn to jello when she is listening to Mahler 6.

2. Music Matters: Henkjan Honing has two posts about the recent Music & Language conference held in Boston. In the first, he talks about how influential Lerdahl and Jackendoff's book, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music was in bringing music theory to scientists. In the second, he points to a Boston Globe reporter who asked whether the conference attendees could help him decide what music to play for his infant son.

3. Feast of Music: A good mini-review of David Lang's "American Shelter," part of a Bang on a Can collaboration. "It was shimmering, transcendent, the most mystical experience of the entire weekend. Take that, kids. And run with it."

4. ThoughtLights: Dan B. muses on how to determine quality. He looks at views by Greg Sandow, Kyle Gann, and a NYTimes article on reading, before coming to his own conclusions.

5. The View from Here: In between music reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times, Andrew Patner posts about the new Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan.

FriPod: Animals

I'm taking care of Buster and Gracie this weekend, so the house is full of animals.

1. Animal Ditties by Anthony Plog (lyrics by Ogden Nash), performed by the Summit Brass on Colors for Brass. Movements are I. Turtle, II. Porpoise, III. Python, IV. Dog, V. Ant, VI. Centipede, VII. Rhinoceros, VIII. Mule

2. "IV. The Animal Realm" from The Six Realms For Amplified Cello And Orchestra by Peter Lieberson, performed by Michaela Fukacova, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Justin Brown.

3. Strange Imaginary Animals album by Eighth Blackbird. "Evanescence" and "Violence" by Gordon Fitzell, "Friction Systems" by David Gordon, Indigenous Instruments by Steven Mackey, "Zaka" by Jennifer Higdon, "Strange Imaginary Remix" by Dennis DeSantis.

4. "Git Along, Little Dogies" performed by Pete Seeger on Children's Concert at Town Hall.

5. "Dog Eats Dog" from Les Miserables by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Herbert Kretzmer, original Broadway Cast.

Can you believe I don't have any tracks with Cat in any form or language?

Update: Peter Kaye helps me out with this video:

Another book meme

Chad torments me with another book meme, where I can show the gaps in my education. Those in bold I have read, those in italics I started but didn't finish. I highly recommend A Confederacy of Dunces and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, two very different books. Which ones have you read?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis [redundant!]
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo [in French!]

I know that guy!

ANAblog has two tribute posts to James Darling, thanks to the re-release of his Kennan Sonata recording. It took me a second to realize my connection with him, but then it hit me. First, I heard him play with the Cleveland Orchestra for the three years that I regularly attended their concerts (fall of '93- spring '96). The trumpet section was pretty spectacular, especially with Jim and Michael Sachs. Second, my ex-wife studied with him for a year at Cleveland State U., and I got to observe one lesson with him. He wasn't the most dynamic or musical trumpet teacher I experienced, that would be Barbara Butler and Jim Thompson respectively, but he clearly knew his craft and communicated it effectively. I think I'll get the new CD, particularly since I don't have a recording of the Kennan or the Bertold Hummel.

The Best of the Rest

I'm inspired by the various "Link Posts" that bloggers do when they have nothing else to say. But given the recent top 50 lists I just published, I'm also interested in giving a voice to those who aren't as well known. So this will be a roughly regular feature, The Best of the Rest, a list of links to posts from blogs that aren't on the Top 50 lists.

1. Theme and Variations: A review of two CD's by the Amadeus Guitar Duo, Baroque Moments and Images from the South. "However, there is much to be said for the guitar ensemble."

2. Of Sound Mind: Falling in love with the sound of cutting apart a large oil tank with a Sawzall. "The overall effect is what you might imagine, a grandiose cacophony, but there is something about the pacing and the incidental sounds made by the removal of a panel, or the constant drone of the waves, that is kind of magical."

3. Musicology/Matters: "A PhD in Horribleness", reviewing/appreciating Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible as an unusual parody musical.

4. Fredosphere: On how writing short science fiction caused composer's block, and the final revisions to Fred's choral work, The Moon that Dreamed of Earth.

5. Joshua Nemith's Cincinnati Pianist Blog: This is a slightly older post, but still a good one: Advice for performing at a funeral. "If your pastor calls you in and tells you that the deceased person's Uncle Hank and Cousin Jimmy want you to accompany them on a banjo and harmonica rendition of Barry Manilow's "Looks Like We Made It" – smile politely and say you would be delighted. When the duo show up twenty minutes before the funeral with five chord changes scribbled on a greasy napkin, and they instruct you to just "follow them", smile again and serve up the music as best you can."

FriPod: High School

I'm in Wisconsin for my 20th high school reunion. Wish me luck!

1. "Chorus: Glory to God in the Highest" from The Messiah by G.F. Handel, performed by Andrew Davis with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and the Toronto Symphony.

2. "The Most High And Mighty Christianus The Fourth, King Of Denmark, His Galliard AKA The Battle Galliard" by John Dowland, performed by Sting and Eden Karamazov.

3. "Groovin' High" by Dizzy Gillespie, performed by Arturo Sandoval on Danzon.

4. "Highway Star" by Deep Purple on Machine Head.

5. "How High the Moon" by Morgan Lewis and Nancy Hamilton, performed by a) Duke Ellington, b) Ella Fitzgerald, c) Modern Jazz Quartet.

6. "In the Highways" by Maybelle Carter, performed by the Peasall Sisters on O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

7. "Move On Up a Little Higher" by Brewster and Davis, performed by Mahalia Jackson.

8. "Poem 1. Vysehrad (The High Citadel)" from Ma Vlast by Bedrich Smetana, performed by Zdenek Macal and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

9. "Summer, Highland Falls" by Billy Joel on Turnstiles.

10. "Thou art gone up on high" from The Messiah by Handel, performed by Samuel Ramey with Andrew Davis and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

11. Movement 1. "The School" from Concerto for Trumpet, Percussion and Keyboard by Dalibor Vackár, performed by John Wallace, Radoslav Kvapil, and the Wallace Collection.

The Political Art Beat

Good thing I included Darcy James Argue on my top 50+ list this time (he's #20). He will be representing ALL of us at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, thus he will be the face of the arts for all those wacky liberals. Not really, as classical music already has an inside man for liberal blogging, in the form of Richard Einhorn, aka Tristero of Digby's Hullabaloo. However, I can't tell whether Tristero is attending Netroots Nation along with his blogging partner. Hey Darcy, can you get an autograph from Markos for me?