The Good Musician

So if you’re new to Little Feat, you’ve gotten a taste of the classic LF with Lowell George, then a few tunes since 1989 with Craig Fuller, and now you’ll get to catch up on some of their latest. Shaun Murphy–the incomparable songstress of soul–broke the rock ‘n roll ceiling, going from backup with LF and many other groups to a full-fledged front-line singer in ‘95. She’s been sending chills up and down spines ever since.
Shaun has a distinguished history in the business, working with Meat Loaf, Eric Clapton, Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band, and other industry greats. …read more

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The Austin Symphony Orchestra Web site has a link to a very user-friendly glossary of musical terms. Pared down to the most used words or terms, this is a handy on-line reference for every good musician. Just the resource to accompany your on-line musical searches.
Don’t forget to purchase your tickets for the gala conclusion to ASO’s Beethoven series. The Ninth Symphony (“Choral”) is coming up on May 16 and 17 at the new Long Center for the Performing Arts.

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After Lowell George’s death, the musicians of Little Feat went on to create more music, singly, and with top headliners, such as Bonnie Raitt. Then in 1989 the group reformed, adding Craig Fuller form Pure Prairie League and Fred Tackett, who had written for and played with the Feat from the beginning, as well as most every great musician you can name. This new configuration was bigger and some say better. They were certainly just as exciting, and with a jazzier, more mature sound. Here are some recent Feat videos. Which do you prefer? Comments are open to vote …read more

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There is life after addiction. Sunlight of the Spirit Music proves that there are good tunes in recovery as well. With features such as the Sober Cafe Podcast and Sobriety Soundcheck blog, these folks are fast becoming a source of powerful music for both musicians and fans in recovery. The Sober Cafe garnered the Entertainment Industries Council 2008 PRISM Award–Celebrating the Art of Making a Difference for best interactive media.
You may already know that Mary Gauthier is a Sunlight of the Spirit musician. Gauthier’s “Mercy Now” CD is still getting good play after its release three years ago. Her …read more

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Image details: Beat Poets served by picapp.com
Art magazine does music. MagWerk’s Play Music Magazine is awash in flash animation, which makes for slow loading, but once you get there, it’s a visual feast. They do cover music, or at least the musicians, in loving graphic techniques.
Page 29 is all about the Beats. There’s a great video of Kerouac reading in front of a cool cat trio, along with vids of William S. Burroughs, Allan Ginsburg, Bob Dylan, and others.
Click on the lower right hand corner to turn the pages. Each page is chock full of links, new pages, new …read more

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Tibet has been much in the news lately, which got me thinking about the remarkable music found there. Relatively unchanged for millenia, the raw, vibrant power of the alpen-horn like dung-chen echoes through the Himalayas. One can learn a lot about a culture by studying their music. If all invading armies stopped at the borders to hear a concert by the local musicians, I think we could well have world peace.
The 14th Dalai Lama at the University of Buffalo–Promoting Peace Across Borders through education site is an excellent resource for Tibetan music. The Tibetan Musical Instruments site has sound …read more

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My daughter never had a chance. Her mom was a musician before she was born. By the time I was six months pregnant, I found I couldn’t get a deep enough breath to execute a Bach sonata line. And if you’re crazy enough to attempt a Bach melodic line, you prepare by ramping up your cardiovascular, as much as the technique and phrasing. Takes beaucoup breath support.
By the time she was a year and a half, I was processing into Sonoma State University, taking a two year senior year, and she was with me a good bit of the …read more

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Clay Collins, clever chronicler at Copyblogger, came up with “Six Ways that Bloggers are like Rappers.” The similarities are plausible, until you think about it, then…well, you decide.
Austin is under a tornado watch tonight, which reminds me of music depicting great storms, or emotional upheaval. Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) describes a cultural movement in Europe from the 1760’s to the 1780’s that was the sensual backlash of the restrictive Age of Enlightenment.
The symphonies of Franz Joseph Haydn exemplify the passionate sweep of melodies, the extreme range of tempi, dynamics, and harmonic density. You can listen to some …read more

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Bad joke. Hang around music departments long enough, and you’ll hear all of them. What’s the difference between a violin and a viola? A viola burns longer. Is that not just cruel? It’s an egalitarian type of dark humor, though. The original voice part of the “mi-mi-mi” joke was a tenor, so see? Spreads the joy.
Back to meme. My second meme, to be precise. My first was from Kay at Kay’s Thinking Cap, and the challenge was to name five things you know now that you never dreamed of twenty-five years ago.
Scott from Metal Martyr tagged me, …read more

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The first annual Celebrating Women Composers concert at Texas State University delighted the audience with seldom-heard chamber pieces, and the premiere of new works by a trio of up-and-coming Texas women composers. The brainchild of Stephanie Britten Phillips, and supported by the Composition Division of the School of Music, the program honored Diversity Month and Women’s History Month with a bouquet of chamber works in unusual configurations.
New works included Call up a Storm, with composer Jenn McLachlan on flute and John Dye augmenting on a laptop computer. McLachlan used contemporary flute techniques such as bending tones, flutter-tongueing, over-blowing to …read more

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