The Good Musician

My three favorite foreign movies this decade are Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, Deepa Mehta’s Water, and The Kite Runner from Swiss director Marc Forster.
I happen to adore Bollywood, it reminds me of the sumptuous saturated colors of 1950’s musicals of my childhood. Operetta under the stars on a Dallas summer evening was a treat for the family, following a dinner at the original El Fenix downtown.
Back to The Kite Runner. I always check out the music credits, and saw the composer was Spanish. Interesting. Then I remembered that there is an Arabic musical tradition in Spain from the …read more

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Jazz violist, arranger, educator, and musical entrepreneur Will Taylor specializes in very tasty arrangements of popular musicians’ songs and albums. He teams with one or more artists to arrange their original tunes, orchestrating them for string quartet. A sort of instrumental The Bobs.
Will is committed to music education as well, and when enough folks sign up, he leads a music summer camp, and teaches privately. Will’s spring intern, Michael Lengefeld, produced some cool videos for the WT&SA Sgt. Pepper’s Band CD, which features Papa Mali and Will Walden.
If you act soon, you can reserve a seat for a house concert …read more

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Here is a cool track by Cornell West and Talib Kweli–Bushonomics.
The sampling is compelling, and the music is gorgeous, no matter the politics. Nothing wrong with socially-conscious music. Hip-hop is the new folk-protest music. In the 50’s and 60’s we got the Weavers, Peter, Paul and Mary, and now we have Cornell and Talib.

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Image details: Live 8 London – Stage served by picapp.com
Just got a 411 from an associate. Introduced me to Joell Ortiz. The song is A Letter to Obama. An authentic, reasoned plea to the next president, whomever that may be, to listen to the people and address the very real social issue of the survival of a good portion of our population.
Not to put too fine a point on it, there are more voters, and voting musicians this election than ever before. Just as the politics of this time will be remarkable, so will the music. It reminds me a …read more

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Image details: China Prepares For Beijing 2008 Olympic Games served by picapp.com
Lovely photograph of large drums being prepared for the Olympics in Beijing. In Western music, there are five categories of instruments, based on how one produced sound: idiophones (shell, horn, wood), membranophones (drum world), aerophones (trumpet, clarinet, flute) chordophones (all y’all strings), and electrophones (anything you plug in).
Chinese instruments are similar in some ways. Their instruments have strings, reeds, airholes. Here’s the big dif: the classification system is based on the ancient pa yin (eight sounds) system which identifies instruments according to the natural material it’s made from …read more

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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) tagged twenty-six U.S. colleges and universities for file sharing. Five hundred and sixty-nine letters went to students across the country, reports Wired Campus, the Chronicle of Higher Education online ‘zine.
Some universities have refused to forward letters from RIAA to students, and others cite the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in not revealing which students received letters.
Austin City Limits releases the lineup for this year’s ACL Festival in just a few hours. Held the last weekend in September, the 26th-28th, this event brings the seasoned pros and the latest new sounds to …read more

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You’ve got plenty of time to get downtown to Elysium, at 705 Red River to experience the fabulous alien Luci and her band Lucid Dementia in all their madness and glory. They’re celebrating the release of their latest CD Trickery, with G-Fire and the Drishti Dancers belly-dancing troup opening at 9:30, followed by subNatural at 10:30.
Be sure to check out my dear Adzuki Bean. She always travels with Bernardette, her theramin, and Steve, her electric violin. This woman also plays harp, flute, violin, and digital camera, and sings. She’s worth the price of admission alone.
Tonight should be transcendent–Austin will be …read more

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What better way to honor Diversity Month and Women’s History Month than to present a concert of music by women composers? The free March 29 performance, sponsored by the Texas State University Music Composition Department, features Houston’s White Oak Trio, San Antonio based percussion ensemble Percutio Maximo, and music faculty from Del Mar College, Texas A & M University at Kingsville, and Texas State University, ably supported by music alumni and graduate students. The free evening performance takes place this Saturday at 8:00 p.m. in the Texas State Music Recital Hall.
Works by three Texas State composers will premiere as part …read more

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