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.