Music 2 Titan

cited: New York Times

New York has always been known as a trend-setting capital of the world. Now, the newest thing in the Village is old-time music- think the 18th century and before. It’s a repertory, comprising music that celebrated the philosophy of performances that blossomed throughout the 20th century. It has taken the form a smourgasbourg of era-sampling that has been the hallmark of American music since region-sampling went passé.

Now, at least in New York, early music has also become a scene. The two-year-old Gotham Early Music Scene lived up to its name this week with the GEMS Project, a series of three programs at Le Poisson Rouge, the trendy Greenwich Village club that is taking the classical music world by storm.

By any definition, early music is wildly diverse. The project’s format, developed in previous concerts, presented three groups per evening, and the first program, on Wednesday, was diverse perhaps to a fault.

Uncommon Temperament, a group of young Baroque performers, opened with works of Handel: a trio sonata and a soprano version of the cantata “Mi Palpita il Cor,” sung by Ariadne Greif.

The performances were accomplished and winning, and Ms. Greif made a game attempt to turn the cantata, a young man’s expression of coronary twitter in the face of budding love, into something mildly dramatic. Reclining in a chair, she enacted the work as a psychiatric session: alas, a one-line joke that without real character development wore thin long before she scribbled the check at the end.

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East of the River, another group led by the recorder virtuosos Nina Stern and Daphna Mor, brought a spirit from east of East River, Brooklyn, to music more or less east of the Danube, as Ms. Stern suggested in preperformance remarks. The listing of Armenian, Macedonian, Italian, Bulgarian and Greek tunes suggested greater variety than emerged from the stage, where an air of modern-day klezmer seemed an insistent presence.

The Clarion Music Society looked to be an alien presence in this setting, taking the stage in concert garb to present music from the court of Catherine the Great. This is a theme, mixing Western European influences and indigenous composition in St. Petersburg, that could barely be suggested in a third of a concert. Ilya Poletaev gave a charming performance of a harpsichord sonata by Baldassare Galuppi. A two-movement string quartet by Anton Ferdinand Titz and arias from operas by Yevstigney Fomin and Bortniansky made little impression, bereft of context.

Except that provided in an overlong spoken introduction by Clarion’s music director, Steven Fox. In general, the talk, guided by Gotham’s executive director, Gene Murrow, proved awkward, finding little middle ground between forced banter and scholarly disquisition.

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Director Murrow claimed “the perfect place” to listen to and play early music was there- with “friends eating and drinking”, among the clanking of dishes and tables. The noise from the inferior sound system and obstructive ventilation system were a worse complement to the performances.

Hopefully, if these buffet-style shows continue, the organizers will find a way to make each disparate dish go together as opposed to making a stomach-churning mix.

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cited: New York Times

Perhaps opera may do better to step out of the velvet corsets and Romantic sets, and bring the medium into the 21st century. The question burns, however: is it sacrilege to bring the likes of Verdi into the realm of a Pink Floyd laser show? Revisions of opera has seen far less enthusiastic reception than similar re-workings of Shakespeare. Are opera fans simply too die-hard, or is there something intrinsic about the vibrato craft that makes its antiquity timeless?

That protectionist sentiment probably accounted for the vehement booing that greeted the director Luc Bondy and his production team when the Metropolitan Opera introduced its new staging of Puccini’s “Tosca” on Sept. 21. The show is no Eurotrash outrage. Mr. Bondy does not even update the setting, let alone turn things surreal or present the story of Tosca, a famed prima donna; her hotheaded rebel lover, Mario Cavaradossi; and the twisted chief of police, Baron Scarpia, as a rehearsal of a modern-day opera company’s “Tosca” production.

The problems arose, it would seem, because for all its contemporary trappings, the production was essentially traditional. So even little deviations from the source seemed like a self-conscious attempt by Mr. Bondy to shake up “Tosca” and rattle “Tosca” lovers.

Now, for an unabashedly avant-garde approach to a staple, there is the Los Angeles Opera’s new production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, directed by Achim Freyer, which is being introduced in installments, so far to mixed reactions. I saw “Die Walküre” last spring and will attend the recently opened “Siegfried” on Wednesday. (“Götterdämmerung” arrives in April, and three complete cycles will be presented in May and June.)

Mr. Freyer, a German theater artist, painter and director, who is overseeing all aspects of the production, tries to capture the magical elements of this mythological tale through weirdly abstract costumes, sets and staging. Characters wield neon spears that look like Jedi light sabers. Alien creatures descend from above and infiltrate the action, a lot of which is not depicted, so that Mr. Freyer can delve into Jungian resonances.

When the long-separated twins Siegmund and Sieglinde meet during Act I of “Die Walküre” (Plácido Domingo and Anja Kampe in the performance I attended), they are surreal, half-complete figures: Siegmund’s face is painted white on one side, black on the other; Sieglinde’s, in reverse. Rather than falling helplessly into a sensual embrace, for long stretches of the act the two are sequestered atop small platforms on opposite sides of the stage, facing forward, seldom looking at each other.

I terribly miss the human dimensions of the characters in this sci-fi “Ring.” After all, Wagner meant for us to see ourselves in this story of a tormented, overreaching god and his dysfunctional family.

But say what you will, Mr. Freyer has a strong production concept, which he conveys through elaborate, sometimes dazzling and very expensive imagery and stage effects (costing more than $32 million). The lesson seems clear: If you decide to go with a concept, stick with it.

No similarly strong take emerges in Mr. Bondy’s convoluted “Tosca,” which replaces the Met’s lavishly realistic Franco Zeffirelli production. At least Mr. Zeffirelli’s popular show had luxurious style, something you can’t say of Mr. Bondy’s anti-Zeffirelli staging, with its cold, spare, emaciated sets.

Mr. Bondy seemed determined to show what a sexually sadistic monster Scarpia is. Actually, I have never seen a production of “Tosca” in which Scarpia’s lechery and ruthlessness has not been utterly evident. The bigger challenge for a director is to convey Scarpia’s other side, the aristocratic bearing and courtly manners that he can turn on as the occasion demands.

A similar problem afflicts many productions of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” Determined to show Giovanni as a reprobate who runs through women, directors fail to convey his high-born swagger and rakish charm.

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It is understandable that a director might want to clear out the theatrical clichés that have attached to a classic, even to the point of discounting stage directions. But if the production is essentially traditional, that director had better come up with compelling alternative action.

Take the ending of Act II in the new “Tosca.” When Scarpia makes his proposition — if Tosca will succumb to him just once, he will retract Mario’s death sentence and set the lovers free — she is forced into the unthinkable: she must kill him.

As the music, the stage directions and what we have learned about Tosca so far in the opera all suggest, she stabs Scarpia in a fit of desperation and will. This comes through in the vehement phrases she sings as Scarpia dies, affirming, almost in an existential rant, what she has done: “This is Tosca’s kiss!” “Look at me! It is I, Tosca, O Scarpia!”

But in Mr. Bondy’s staging, Tosca (the charismatic soprano Karita Mattila) plots the murder, albeit quickly. Devising an entrapment for Scarpia, she reclines, alluringly, on a couch, the knife hidden behind her, awaiting her prey. That Tosca would be so calculating at this moment seems all wrong. There I go, sounding like an opera fanatic saying, “Tosca would not do that.” But directors like Mr. Bondy drive you to it.

Then, as the stage directions indicate, during a long span of eerily subdued orchestral music Tosca enacts a ritual, placing candles on either side of Scarpia’s body and a crucifix on his heart. This theatrical stroke is clearly too familiar and melodramatic for Mr. Bondy.

Instead, he has Ms. Mattila climb to the threshold of a window, where she considers leaping to her death. But she collects herself and slinks onto a couch next to the one over which Scarpia’s body is sprawled. As the curtain falls, she appears to be musing on what has happened and what to do next.

What of the candles and crucifix? That Tosca is a devout believer is central to her character. Yes, she is having an affair with Mario, which is technically a sin. But Tosca has a deeply personal relationship with the Madonna. They speak woman to woman. Tosca is an artist; she cannot follow norms. She is sure that the Madonna understands this.

So when Tosca kills Scarpia, even though he was evil, she must both expiate her sin and enact a sacred ritual for his sorry soul. A director who ignores this staging idea, the work of another production team (Puccini and his librettists), had better have a brilliant substitute. “Should I kill myself?” hardly qualifies.

Many opera directors have revealed fresh insights into works through the simple device of updating. Updating has gotten a bad rap. Shifting a story to another era can easily seem a glib and arbitrary maneuver. But done with imagination, an updated production can take today’s audiences to the core of a familiar work. Jonathan Miller’s inspired production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” for example, first presented at the English National Opera in 1982.

Mr. Miller relocates the story from 16th-century Mantua to Little Italy in Manhattan in the 1950s. The Duke of Mantua becomes a powerful, preening head of a Mafia gang. And in an ingenious stroke, Rigoletto, Verdi’s hunchbacked court jester, who must keep the Duke and his entourage amused and be the butt of jokes, becomes the bartender at the gang’s favorite hangout.

One of the stated missions of Peter Gelb as general manager of the Met is to entice new audiences into the opera house with boldly theatrical productions. But who is the target audience for this muddled half-and-half “Tosca,” no experiment in audacious modern theater?

Joseph Volpe, Mr. Gelb’s predecessor, took more risks in recruiting directors than he is generally given credit for, though mainly with operas of second-tier popularity. Robert Wilson’s boldly abstract staging of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” was booed on opening night in 1998 but cheered the next season, after audiences had adjusted to the look and concept of the work, and after the cast’s original stylized hand and arm gestures had been toned down considerably. Herbert Wernicke’s wondrous fairy-tale staging of Strauss’s “Frau Ohne Schatten” remains one of my all-time favorite Met shows. Other standouts included Jürgen Flimm’s production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” placed in some vaguely contemporary repressive state, and Francesca Zambello’s elegantly mystical rendering of Berlioz’s “Troyens.”

But for the bread-and-butter works, like “La Bohème” “Turandot,” “La Traviata” and, yes, “Tosca,” Mr. Volpe wanted productions from which the Met could get some mileage and pack in audiences even when the casts were routine. This usually meant ordering up another Zeffirelli extravaganza.

Maybe you can mock Mr. Volpe’s realism, but he knew what he was talking about. Maybe this season’s stagings of Rossini’s “Armida” by Mary Zimmerman’ or Pierre Audi’s production of Verdi’s “Attila,” are a venture, so what? Opera fans are not about to have their hearts broken by re-interpretations of these pieces. The Met, however, has quite the disappointing burden to carry with Mr. Bondy’s “Tosca”.

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cited: New York Times

50 Cent’s Saturday concert looked like a détente between schools and generations of hip-hop. The This Is 50 Festival, on Governors Island’s Water Taxi Beach, began with insightful, still-sweet rappers Kid Cudi and Wale. 50 Cent, one of the last of the big-time gangsta rappers, who had multimillion-selling albums in 2003 and 2005 before gangsta lost momentum, also performed.

But that was a fake-out. After amiably received sets by the newcomers, 50 Cent took over with a two-and-a-half-hour gangsta extravaganza. The set was crammed with guest slots — friends, allies, disciples — and insisted gangsta was still alive, rough and ready to compete.

The songs were about danger and outlaw excess — guns, drugs and sex — with crude, shout-along hooks. The neat backup tracks of the openers gave way to thudding, cranked-up bass lines and distortion, punctuated by the sounds of gunshots and breaking glass from the D.J., Whoo Kid. As at old-school New York rap shows, the stage was filled with onlookers; rappers demanded, “Put your hands up!” — as a dance move, not a holdup. And the sold-out crowd exploded. This was the bad-guy party they came for.

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With his baby face, his boyish grin, his genuine gunshot wounds and the singsong choruses of his hits, Curtis Jackson, a k a 50 Cent, established himself as a gangsta rapper who could also be a charmer: gruff and belligerent, but also amused. His next album, “Before I Self Destruct,” has been delayed repeatedly, and his recent mixtape, “Forever King,” presents a paranoid, embittered character, but he was smiling broadly onstage. He was as much host as star: performing a song or two, mostly from his first albums, and then announcing a surprise and bringing on another guest.

They included not only his own G Unit (with Tony Yayo and Lloyd Banks), but also D-Block (formerly the Lox), Wyclef Jean, Maino and Red Cafe. Between songs about lust and crime were celebrations of upward mobility despite the odds, like “We Gonna Make It” by Jadakiss of D-Block and Maino’s triumphant “All the Above.” But less righteous boasts, like 50 Cent’s “What Up Gangsta” and “P.I.M.P.,” drew even stronger reactions.

There were more guests before 50 Cent made his entrance: Jim Jones and Juelz Santana, along with Al Be Back, Uncle Murda, Cory Gunz, Papoose and the four-rapper group Slaughterhouse. Mr. Gunz showed off a virtuosic delivery, accelerating and decelerating. Papoose started rapping his way through the alphabet, with long strings of words all starting with the same letter; he got to G before his time ran out.

The openers made every effort. Kid Cudi, although he appears on the new album by Jay-Z, is an oddball in hip-hop. He’s somewhere between rapper and singer, intoning his rhymes on a few notes, and instead of boasting, he presents himself as an introvert, confessing to his vulnerabilities and uncertainties, imagining himself as a visitor from another planet. It’s a persona better suited to headphones than to an outdoor concert. Wale, a Washington, D.C., rapper who thinks hard about the state of hip-hop when he’s not bragging about being “the brightest of the youth,” was more vigorous and endearing.

This concert’s right was no match for the huge number of stories of wrongs, even those years old. Only time will tell if this is the marking of a new era in rap, or a new movement towards hip-hop nostalgia.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

cited: New York Times

Sunday morning in Brooklyn took a bloodier turn than normal this past week, as reggae singer Major Mackerel was stabbed with a sword by a neighbor.

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Garfield Dixon, also known as Major Mackerel, after a confrontation with a neighbor over the neighbor’s wife, the police said.

When the fight was over, the police had arrested Oscar Joseph, 37, on charges including assault with intent to cause serious injury — in this case, to his neighbor the singer, whose real name is Garfield Dixon, 41.

The police said that about 8 a.m., they were called to a two-story brick house on East 91st Street near East New York Avenue, where Mr. Dixon and Mr. Joseph live on different floors. They found Mr. Dixon “with lacerations to the head, arm and hand.” They arrested Mr. Joseph and recovered a two-foot-long sword.

Mr. Dixon, who achieved notice as a dancehall reggae artist in the late 1980s and early ’90s, was taken to Kings County Hospital Center.

Mr. Dixon’s companion, Novia Watson, 51, said the fight started after Mr. Dixon returned from buying cigarettes.

When she went to open the door for Mr. Dixon, she saw Mr. Joseph waiting in the foyer. Mr. Joseph raised the sword, she said, and the two men started arguing and fighting over the weapon.

“I was trying to take it from him myself,” Ms. Watson said.

The fight spilled out onto the sidewalk, and Mr. Joseph accused Mr. Dixon of harassing his wife. When Ms. Watson returned from calling the police, Mr. Dixon was pacing on the sidewalk, blood seeping from a deep slash across the palm of his left hand.

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Ms. Watson said the police arrived within minutes and arrested Mr. Joseph, who continued to shout at Mr. Dixon, saying he made rude, suggestive comments to his wife. Ms. Watson said doctors stitched up Mr. Dixon’s hand and told him they might have to operate.

Later on that eventful Sunday, Mr. Dixon made his way homr from the hostpital. He still wore his hospital gown, accessorized with a cast on his left hand and  white gauze covering his dreadlocks (a bandage, not a trandy fashion decision). He claimed not to have harassed Mr. Joseph’s wife.

“I was singing my song, then I see him with a sword,” he said. [Read the rest of this entry...]

cited: Los Angeles  Times

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Philharmonic welcomed its 11th conductor, Gustavo Dudamel with a free concert at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night, as opposed to a staid program in Walt Disney Hall, the orchestra’s home. The more formal show is on Thursday. “Bienvenido Gustavo!,” as the concert was called, ended with a vivacious and exploratory rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, conducted by Mr. Dudamel. The orchestra collected a range of superb vocalists to solo, backed with a chorus of 200 handpicked from the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, the Our Lady of Los Angeles Spanish Choir, the Philippine Chamber Singers and other local ensembles.

But there has never been a gala quite like this to celebrate the arrival of a conductor to a major American orchestra. For more than two hours before Mr. Dudamel appeared, there were performances that brought together renowned artists from pop, jazz, gospel and the blues with young area musicians. Andraé Crouch, the Grammy-winning gospel singer and songwriter, performed with his New Christ Memorial Church Adult and Children’s Choir. The bass and trumpet player Flea — a founding member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, like Mr. Dudamel, a musician devoted to musical education — performed songs with an ensemble of youngsters from the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, which he opened in 2001.

The Latin rock musician David Hidalgo, the blues great Taj Mahal and Alfredo Rodríguez, a young Cuban pianist, also took part. And the jazz giant Herbie Hancock played with an ensemble from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. When the actor Jack Black, introducing Mr. Hancock, paid tribute to Mr. Dudamel for galvanizing Los Angeles (“This dude’s on fire,” he said), the audience, which packed the 18,000-seat bowl, cheered and shouted, “Bienvenido Gustavo!”

That Mr. Dudamel, who made his American debut conducting the Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005, has already had an enormous impact on the cultural life of this city was clear when he made his first appearance of the night, conducting the YOLA Expo Center Youth Orchestra. YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles) is part of a two-year-old initiative by the Philharmonic to provide instruments and orchestra training to students, modeled on El Sistema, the vast music education system in Mr. Dudamel’s native Venezuela.

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Some 100 students were selected to perform on Saturday. At 28, his shaggy locks somewhat trimmed for the occasion, Mr. Dudamel looked like the youngsters’ cool older brother. The students, mostly from minority neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, gamely played through an orchestral arrangement of the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by Steven Venz, and their families had pride-of-place seating in the first rows of the bowl.

All American orchestras now espouse music education and reaching out to the community. But Mr. Dudamel, as a product of the Venezuelan program, shows a particularly intense desire to connect with young people and make music accessible to all. If, working with Deborah Borda, the president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he can make it central to the education of students in Los Angeles, Mr. Dudamel could change the template for what an American orchestra can be.

None of this would matter, though, if Mr. Dudamel did not have the musical substance to back up his vision. The depth of his skills and artistry is about to be tested vigorously.

He met the first test on this night with the performance of the Beethoven Ninth. It is always hard to assess the quality of an orchestra’s performance at an amplified outdoor space. The vocal soloists and the choristers were overamplified. In the finale, when Matthew Rose sang the first words of Schiller’s text, he sounded like the Bionic Booming Baritone. The soprano Measha Brueggergosman, the mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung and the tenor Toby Spence, all exceptional singers, came through with a more balanced acoustic.

But Mr. Dudamel’s intentions were mostly realized. This was not the Beethoven’s Ninth some might have expected from a young dynamo. The tempos were restrained. Even in the scherzo, he strove for an organic steady pace. The slow movement had breadth and quiet intensity. And the finale, the choristers fired with enthusiasm, was exhilarating. It was affecting to hear Schiller’s references to the “starry canopy” performed outdoors on this balmy night.

After the prolonged ovation, Mr. Dudamel addressed the audience, which included many Latino families, in English and Spanish.

He spoke of being a proud Venezuelan and a proud South American but also a “proud American,” saying that there should be no north and south but “one American continent.”

As the fireworks began to light up, he then repeated the ending section of the finale. The maestro’s name lit up like a marquee above the performers- the perfect touch for the Hollywood Bowl to welcome Hollywood’s newest conductor.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

cited: Los Angeles Times

Perched (rather, trying to perch) on a piano, orbited by an assorted of metal rings around her body, Lady Gaga cracked up onstage in the beginning of Saturday Night Live’s new season. While the Swedish singer popped in her own right, the performance fizzled thanks to Gaga’s stage partner, Madonna.

The artist formerly known as the Material Girl appeared in an early skit for a brief exchange of put-downs with the current pop fave. Perhaps a symbol of passing of the pop diva torch, or perhaps some sort of mocking her 2003 MTV Video Music Awards pairing with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, which was then meant to serve as some sort of passing of the pop diva torch, Madonna looked uncomfortable, and not quite sure of why she was tussling with Lady Gaga. It all felt a bit hastily thrown together, and little more than an excuse to show two pop stars in a cat fight.

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Not to mention — Madonna doesn’t need to stump to these kind of promotional appearances. Even with a greatest hits collection released to stores last week, let’s let Lady Gaga have her moment, or at least give Madonna something better to say than, “Guess what, I’m totally taller than you.”

Or perhaps we should just give credit where credit is due.

Lady Gaga was joined by Madonna on “Saturday Night Live,” and the high-profile guest shot failed to overshadow Gaga’s second music performance, a piano-based medley of her hits, as well as a touch of new song “Bad Romance.”

Pulling off a medley is no small feat itself, as they reek of award-show self-aggrandizing. But Gaga looked free and unrehearsed, and tossed off a rare medley worth watching. While it would have been nice to hear a bit more of forthcoming single “Bad Romance,” what audiences received was even better. Free from the tired retro ’80s synth pop of “LoveGame,” Gaga flashed her nightclub-ready pipes when she went solo at the piano, and also showed off a bit of improvisation.

While diving in and out of “Poker Face,” Gaga played to the New York crowd, bragging about the hot dogs on 72nd Street (”they’re tasty and they’re cheap”) and even exposed some baseball loyalties. Gaga copped to being nostalgic for the days when she “cheered for the Yankees with my dad in Section 6,” and Major League Baseball responded by giving  her a shout-out (perhaps a National Anthem at a playoff game is in her near future).

Yet whereas most artists come to late night television to show off their latest singles and generate a few headlines, Gaga, who can say the words “disco stick” with a straight face, displayed a side of herself that isn’t always in evidence on her 2008 smash album, “The Fame”: She’s not afraid to take risks.

Style-wise. Lady Gaga is respected as fearless and original, but her electro-pop has been less rule-breaking. Leaving her red lace, glass-bra’d self bare and dismantling her highly produced songs into simply piano and voice, Gaga shows herself to venture forth bravely. She did so with a courage that is- sadly- rare on national television. It’s a pleasure to see a popstar doing more than a pole dance. Too bad it was after midnight.

My Take: When pop stars first started exploring their sexuality- like Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis, and yes, even Joni Mitchell- it was a revolutionary, communal celebration of the formerly taboo.

Now, when a singer gyrates half-naked on stage or in front of the camera, it is just another addition to the long litany of performances that have less to do with music, and more about showing off the star’s hard-won hard bod.

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Cited: New York Times

For both musicians and the melodically challenged, the iPhone music app. If you know how to play a real instrument, it functions as a pocket-sized version for impromptu jamming. If you can’t pick a string to save your life, you can still pluck out a song on the app- it’s even programmed to stay on key, if that’s what you’re into.

A main goal for many of these apps’ developers is to introduce nonmusical people to music, and musical people to different kinds of music. And when taken less as a serious instrument and more as a sampler for the wide world of music, these devices are wildly successful.

For those dying to shred, however, they leave something to be desired.

The majority of apps in this category try to cram a fully functioning instrument into an interface that, while touch-sensitive, is still only three inches wide. It’s about the same width as a guitar neck, so six strings fit reasonably well. Still, only a few frets can be covered at once, and even the simple acts of plucking a string and forming chords take a significant degree of finger wrangling.

Similarly, while many apps offer recording features, synching up separate apps without external recording software is difficult, unless you spend a lot of time behind a mixing console.

So the essential question becomes, are music apps real tools for artistic expression, or are they in the same league as, say, Bejeweled or other time-killing games?

“When it all comes down to it, these are all games, pretty much,” said Turner Kirk, community marketing manager for Smule, whose Ocarina is one of the simplest yet most inventive musical apps on the market. “We’d like to think of them as expressive musical instruments, even though we might be limited by hardware. But really, it’s like a toy.”

Ocarina proves that simplicity works in this environment. An actual ocarina — a simple wind instrument, frequently found with only four holes — is among the simplest music makers, and its virtual version is perfect for the iPhone interface. One has only to blow into the device’s microphone to control the instrument — almost identically to the way one would an actual ocarina.

Because it’s an iPhone, of course, users can take the experience to different levels, with the ability to change pitch, upload their recordings and span the globe to listen to others’ tunes. An online songbook lets even a beginner ocarinist play Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

Other simple apps that have been successful include Normalware’s Bebot, where one can make a tuxedoed cartoon robot sing electronic notes by dragging a finger across the screen. Tones and settings are customizable; one option places strings across the interface. It’s always perfectly in tune and is incredibly diverting. “Because apps like this handle the difficult part of making music — producing a good sound and playing the right notes — they free the user for the fun part of the process: getting expressive,” said David Battino, co-author of “The Art of Digital Music.”

Even real musicians use Bebot; a recent San Francisco Chronicle article on musical applications led with Dream Theater’s keyboardist, Jordan Rudess, playing it on the iPhone during a performance in San Jose, Calif.

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Sheer simplicity, however, isn’t the only route to success. Moocow Music, which offers apps for bass, guitar, piano and organ, suggests on its Web site that its creations can be used “as a ‘musical notepad’ for working out riffs to play back in the studio on a real (instrument).” This is true. It’s also a tacit admission that the apps are not meant to replace real instruments.

Still, the care that goes into these apps’ creation is obvious. Rather than simply offering one sound per note, Moocow has loaded multiple guitar and bass samples for each fret and string, which are played randomly when that note is struck. Because real guitar strings are plucked or strummed slightly differently each time, this lends a subtle air of authenticity to the sound.

Several guitar apps feature preloaded scales, chord forms and tablature features for those looking to work out ideas. They make for terrific notation tools for pros and theory tools for novices. But as for actual instrumentality, well, there aren’t many people who say an iPhone feels better in the hand than a guitar. Or a drumstick. Or a cowbell.

And this is where it gets back to being like a video game. Many musical apps offer the ability to record a track, then add layers on top of it. Doing this between disparate apps is impossible without external recording software, but a multi-instrumental app like Moocow’s Band gives novices the opportunity to record and edit tracks with drums, bass and guitar, and make sure it all sounds pretty good (even if one doesn’t know how to play a lick of music). It’s as much a game as Guitar Hero, only instead of trying to keep up with prerecorded music, the goal is to make music of one’s own.

If there’s gray area, it’s with the synth mixing and sound creation programs. The BeatMaker from Intua, for example, combines drum machines, samplers and sequencers. It allows users to layer tracks, then loop them as one would in a full-fledged studio. It’s a powerful application (and, at $19.99, one of the most expensive musical apps on the market), but it’s all too easy for a novice to become lost in its features within moments of loading it up.

For companies like Sound Trends, whose Looptastic series allows for the creation of multilayered beats via mixing and matching of audio samples, there’s little pretense of being a studio replacement.

“We wanted to capture something that’s in the moment and fun,” said Sound Trends’ president, Aaron Higgins. “There are a few apps out there that are intimidating and lack the fun. You can play around with them, but once you open up the control panel it’s like opening the hood of a car. We made a conscious decision that that wasn’t the direction we wanted to go.”

Reasons for that decision are plentiful, but one stands above the others: the casual novice market is a whole lot bigger than the hard-core musician one. The user who would just as soon loop a few beats together as blow up a virtual Russian army while taking the train to work is key to Mr. Higgins’s reasoning.

Even when it comes to the professional music makers, this iPhone app is a godsend. How many hours of idle strumming goes into each gut-wrenching song? Instead of cheapening the guitar experience, this app has the potential to make inspiration all the more accessible- by  making it mobile and consistently available. And, I hear it can make phone calls, too.

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My Take: I once go-fered a music producer, who told me that pretty soon, all an artist would have to do is to sing a scale and he would mix it into a stellar performance. I’m fairly sure that in the future, they won’t even have to sing a scale.

So, this iPhone app that stays in key- to me it’s like a drum machine that doesn’t lose rhythm. If you’re that dedicated, why not take the time to legitimately learn how to play your chosen instrument?

Not that I’m an absolute hater, either. When my brilliant friend showed up at my door with her iTouch version of a guitar, I was over the moon. Now, I could insist that she play for me without making her carry her guitar and amp all over creation.

In the end, this app has the same potential as a video camera. Yes, the means of production are far more accessible, so anyone can produce something of passable quality. Still, there will never be a replacement for inspiration, skill, and dedication.

Until there’s an app for that, too.

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Related Resources

Still need that old-time technology

Even if we phased out wood and strings and all guitars were digital, there are still some things that will need to be huge and heavy duty- like an office copier. Tech toys may become teeny-tiny, but every operation needs a reliable source of duplication, like a time-tested, used color copier. Great machines like that Canon Imagerunner have proven themselves again and again, and it’s impossible to think of a pocket-sized verion that can compare.

Things both great and small

Love and music- now there are ways to carry both with you all the time. Music, we’ve talked about, but I haven’t yet mentioned the beautiful love pendants that are available, which allow you to wear the symbol around your neck as a talisman of amour. If you’re more of a fighter than a lover, there are also fight necklaces, which will give you the strength and protection necessary for battle.

Live the good life… virtually

If you’re willing to let your iPhone turn you into a rockstar, why not let your computer turn you into a high roller? The difference is, your winnings from playing blackjack online are real, while that rocking hook your app helped you record might not be (sorry). Leap into the cyber-world and test your luck at the online casinos.

cited: New York Times

LONDON — If you go to a Ukelele Orchestra show, the only expectation you should bring is for an exceptional performance. They recognize that not everyone is so caution-less, as orchestra member Dave Suich stated, “Relief is one of the major emotions of our audience.

But the happy surprise of encountering something completely different from the Tiny Tim-style hamming or banjo-plucking embarrassment of your imagination doesn’t wholly explain the deep love the orchestra inspires, not just in Britain, but also in Europe and as far away as New Zealand and Japan. Previously the private passion of a large but sub rosa group of devotees, the orchestra hit mainstream popularity last month when it performed to a sold-out crowd at the BBC Proms music festival at the Royal Albert Hall here.

“They have grown into a much-loved institution,” The Observer of London wrote. In The Financial Times Laura Battle praised the orchestra members’ “consummate skill” and said that the “sophisticated sound they make — both percussive and melodic — is at once hilarious and heartfelt.” The Evening Standard said, “The country would plainly be a happier place if more of us played the ukulele.”

Part of the appeal is that the group — eight of them, all singing and playing the ukulele — extracts more than seems humanly possible from so small and so modest an instrument, with its four little strings. Part of it is the members’ deadpan sense of humor, in which they laugh at themselves as much as at the music.

There is also the unexpected delight of their repertory, a genre-bending array stretching from “The Ride of the Valkyries” to the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K,” which they perform as a friendly folk song, infusing even lines like “I am an Antichrist” with a cozy bonhomie. They do a cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which affords Mr. Suich an opportunity to release his long ponytail and fling his hair around, à la Cobain.

Ukuleles are mildly humorous and kind of cute, particularly when deployed by adults dressed in black tie. “The minute that eight people walk onstage with ukes, you’re winning already,” said Will Grove-White, an orchestra member.

Six of the group — Peter Brooke Turner, Kitty Lux, George Hinchliffe and Hester Goodman, in addition to Mssrs. Grove-White and Suich — met recently to discuss its philosophy and raison d’être. (Missing were Richie Williams, who was not feeling well, and Jonty Bankes, who was out of the country.)

They have been together, more or less, since 1985, and they spoke in a jumble, finishing one another’s sentences and undercutting one another’s remarks like the old friends they are.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s wearing brown shoes,” warned Mr. Brooke Turner, as Mr. Hinchliffe tried to make a serious, nonukulele-related point about the National Health Service. “In England that is a sign of untrustworthiness.”

They all generate ideas for new pieces and play around with novel ways of making them work. The idea is often to do things “that are not exactly normal,” Mr. Hinchliffe said, to get the ukuleles to produce noises that are nothing like ukulele noises at all.

“It’s good having this somewhat poxy instrument that can’t do much because there aren’t limitless options, and it forces you to think imaginatively about how to create sounds and rhythms,” Mr. Grove-White said.

They use their voices: whistling in a certain way, for instance, can approximate the sound of a wind instrument in a piece like the theme song from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Striking a ukulele to dampen the strings, and then moving the nonplucking hand up and down lightly can mimic the “wah-wah” sound of an electric guitar pedal in the theme song from “Shaft.” To poke fun of songs full of flamboyantly long notes, the orchestra plays rapid successions of short plucks with their strings.

“With heavy-metal riffs, when you pluck them out on the ukulele, they sound really weedy,” Mr. Grove-White said. “It’s a good way to mock pomposity.”

They do that often, and cheerfully. “One of the things that we feel about pop music is that while we’re very fond of it, very affectionate toward it, at the same time we recognize the ludicrousness and pretentiousness of it,” Mr. Hinchliffe said. “A lot of songs really are extremely ludicrous. In a way, it’s kind of interesting to observe that you can love something and find it risible at the same time.”

The band had its roots in Mr. Hinchliffe’s childhood in “the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire,” as he calls it, when his father brought home a ukulele-banjo, a cousin of the ukulele. “After a while I said to my father, ‘Could we get some strings for it?’ ” he recalled.

In 1985 he bought a ukulele for his friend and fellow musician Kitty Lux. “We were in a doo-wop band together,” Ms. Lux said. “It was called, I don’t remember, Something Something and the Acid Drops.”

Mr. Suich joined too, and the other members gravitated toward the group over the years, relieved to find like-minded ukulele adherents.

“People love them like puppies,” Mr. Suich said.

“They lift depression,” Mr. Grove-White said.

“It’s quite an empowering instrument,” Ms. Goodman said.

“You can do an entire world tour while carrying only hand luggage,” Mr. Hinchliffe said.

If you’re ready to liquidate your assets and hit the road, sell your cash flow notes, cash in, and spend it en route.  Now is the perfect time to trade in those real estate notes.

They have deliberately not sought record deals and earn most of their money from 150 or so live performances a year and from the albums they sell directly from www.ukuleleorchestra.com, their Web site. Recently they produced “Dreamspiel,” a ukulele opera with lyrics by the American playwright Michelle Carter, and collaborated with the British Film Institute to set snippets of old films to music in a show called “Ukulelescope.”

At the Proms the orchestra performed a cover of Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag,” sung sweetly by Ms. Goodman and including an original line: “Come with me Tuesday/Bring your ukulele.” Ms. Lux sang a Prom favorite, “Jerusalem,” introducing it as a song “about a nuclear power station in the green, rolling English countryside.”

There was also a cover of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” performed by a suitably insane-sounding Mr. Grove-White, ranting nonsensically in something that was not quite French. “I started approximating his lyrics, but you get the feeling he made them up as well,” Mr. Grove-White said of David Byrne.

The high point might very well have been when the audience- at the band’s request- joined in with over 1,000 ukeleles to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The band’s goal to spread their uke-love may very well be considered a success, as members of the crowd who could not keep up technically simply waved their instruments in the air in a pure expression of the joy of strings.

From the stage, Mr. Hinchliffe happily called the piece “a fragment of Beethoven for 1,008 ukuleles.”

[Read the rest of this entry...]

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cited: New York Times

The plan: some DJ’s will stay on. Saturdays will still host the Metropolitan Opera. Vocal music and religious programming will fade out while Vivaldi will continue to blast- “Just about anything.”

WQXR, the only classical music station in New York, will have a new sound after Oct. 8, according to plans unveiled on Wednesday by WNYC, its new owner.

Chiefly, “there’s going to be a lot more music,” said Laura R. Walker, the president and chief executive officer of WNYC Radio. “That in and of itself is a huge thing.” She said the new WQXR, which is becoming a public radio station, would have about 4 minutes of underwriting announcements an hour. WQXR’s commercials now can reach 12 minutes an hour.

“We can program the music around the music, not just commercials,” Ms. Walker said.

Although WQXR will travel up the dial to 105.9 from 96.3 FM, WNYC officials were clear that much of its music would remain safe and on the traditional side in an effort not to alienate its longtime listeners. But the station hopes to attract new listeners more accustomed to the public radio sensibility and online listening.

Ms. Walker said she wanted to combine the best of both worlds. “It’s the longstanding tradition of being a 24/7 classical music station with WNYC’s curatorial point of view and passion and commitment to discovery,” she said.

Tradition, though, appears to top boat-rocking. A mission statement prepared by WQXR’s new programmers said, “There may indeed be times when the more radical and unfamiliar pieces work, but we will not favor them over the work that speaks directly to the needs of uplift, beauty and contemplation.”

“Greatness matters,” it added. “Bach trumps Telemann.”

Less familiar works, more modern music and pieces geared toward a younger audience will be presented on the station’s new Internet stream, called Q2. WNYC radio’s listenership is more than double that of its stream, the station said. “Radio definitely trumps Internet still,” Ms. Walker said.

Several WQXR hosts have been rehired, including Jeff Spurgeon, Midge Woolsey and Elliott Forrest, who will have daytime shows, along with a newcomer, Naomi Lewin from WGUC, Cincinnati’s classical public radio station. WNYC’s Terrance McKnight and his colleague David Garland will assume evening duties. Overnight music will continue to be canned, but now with recorded introductions by a host.

The station will continue to broadcast the Met, the New York Philharmonic and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, along with programs — some of them syndicated — including “The McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase,” “Performance Today,” “From the Top” and “Pipedreams.” The fates of “Reflections From the Keyboard” and the Metropolitan Museum of Art concert series are uncertain.

The station will phase out the broadcast of religious services by the end of the year because National Public Radio, of which WNYC is a member, forbids such programming.

Much of the music on WNYC, which has steadily become more of a talk station in recent years, will migrate to WQXR. Weekday evenings on WNYC’s FM station, 93.9, will now be almost all talk. Several music shows will remain, including “Soundcheck” and “New Sounds.” Music will still have a strong presence on WNYC on weekends.

WNYC took charge of WQXR after it was sold by The New York Times Company, a move that probably saved its classical format. The public radio station announced a $15 million fund-raising campaign to pay for the acquisition and operations. Ms. Walker said the station was about halfway there.

If you’re want a change of scenery to match the change in music, have you thought about buying a Rockland County riverfront property? Quiet, luxurious- your new Palisades property is the perfect place to enjoy a sonota or even just scrambled eggs.

The goal for WQXR is to present “the greatest Western music performed by the greatest performers we can find,” said Christopher Bannon, program director for the sister stations.

The mission statement proclaims a philosophy of “the right music at the right time.”

“Monday morning, when you’re trying to get your kids to school, you won’t hear the large choral works,” said Limor Tomer, the executive producer for music.

The programmers also provided a sample list of “core composers” and the works that would most likely play on the radio versus the Internet. They stressed that the list was but a guideline.

Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Wagner were there. So were Copland, Janacek, Gershwin, Satie, Sibelius and the ever-popular Vivaldi. Mahler was missing.

Schubert symphonies were deemed radio-worthy but not the piano trios or songs, which were reserved for Q2. Radio received Ravel orchestra music but not solo piano works; Sibelius’s symphonies but not his tone poems; Janacek chamber works but not operas; Brahms symphonies but not choral works; Beethoven symphonies and piano concertos but not the late piano sonatas, songs or chamber works.

And, except for his “shorter sacred works,” Vivaldi still has a home.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Elizabeth Taylor, the rarely-seen star, tearfully eulogized her longtime friend at Jackson’s funeral on Thursday the 3rd. “We shouldn’t have to be here,” Taylor told fellow mourners, “He shouldn’t have passed away.”

Nonetheless, nearly 200 of Jackson’s closest friends and family members tried their best to say goodbye to the entertainer at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, Calif. Even his shyest show-business friends attended, after shunning the massive public memorial in July. Longtime pal Macaulay Culkin sat with girlfriend Mila Kunis, while Jackson’s ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley gave his mother Katherine a tearful embrace. Taylor was perhaps the most impressive of the guests. After publicly proclaiming that she would not be part of the July memorial’s “hoopla,” she gave in to a more private display of sorrow at the funeral. “She shed some tears,” says one guest.

Held in the shadow of Forest Lawn’s Great Mausoleum on a warm summer night, the service proved a fitting setting for such star-studded grief. A “Thriller”-esque moon tinted orange by smoke from the nearby forest fires added to the dramatic backdrop. The specially built stage was adorned with six large bouquets of white lilies, white roses and green topiaries. Portraits of Jackson served as bookends for his casket.

Jackson’s family was not upstaged by the evening’s more famous mourners, dominating the affair that began with his brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Randy serving as pallbearers. Randy then escorted Jackson’s three children, Prince Michael, Paris Katherine and Prince Michael II, to the coffin, where the children laid a crown at its head as a tribute to the King of Pop. They then returned to their front-row seats, near their grandparents. There was no repeat of Paris’s touching moment at the memorial when she tearfully addressed the crowd, calling Jackson “the best father I could imagine”; during Thursday’s ceremony, the children stayed silent. “But they were very composed and strong and would have made their father proud,” says the guest.

Michael Jackson wasn’t the only one with legal problems in the City of Angels. If you find yourself in need of a Los Angeles depo reporter, find one you trust. Legal expenses spiral, so make sure you invest in a high-quality, yet affordable, LA California court reporting service.

Family patriarch Joe Jackson was also front and center. He was one of the first family members to arrive at the event, exiting one of their five rented Phantom Rolls Royces with his grandchildren in tow. A controversial figure, Joe spoke at the funeral in defense of his son. “He felt people had been trying to cheat Michael,” says the guest. “He said that they will find out what led to Michael’s death. And said they will not rest until they found out.”

Jackson’s lesser-known friends were also given a moment to share their memories of the fallen star. The spontaneous speeches were some of the most poignant. One in particular was delivered by David Rothenberg, a burn victim whom Jackson took care of for years after 90% of his body was scorched in a childhood fire. “He was very scarred over all of his body,” says a guest. “He spoke about Michael and how he cared for [Rothenberg] for so long without asking for anything in return. It was very moving.” 

Carrying his casket, Jackson’s brother led the procession into the Great Mausoleum’s Holly Terrace. Each guest was permitted a private farewell. One attendee spoke of Clifton Davis’ rendition of “Never Can Say Goodbye” (a song he wrote for the Jackson 5) as an appropriate embodiment of the group’s emotions. “[Davis] stopped the song at the end and said, ‘Michael, we can’t say goodbye,’ ” the guest remembers. “‘But what we can say is that we love you.’ “

“That sent shivers down my spine.”

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My Take: After having his name dragged through the mud for years, it’s finally good to see Michael Jackson get some kind of public grace. A lifelong performer, who’s suffered the weight of child stardom, the King of Pop has finally gotten his crown back.

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Life Insurance

When you or your loved ones go, don’t leave behind the stress of monetary worries. Safeguard your family’s well-being, and get yourself a life insurance quote. You will already be leaving behind a world of hurt- at least leave enough money to make proper funeral arrangements. Explore the options of universal life insurance quotes and take one more worry off your mind.

Urns

If you’ve reached the unhappy time when you are in need of an urn, carefully weigh the options before deciding on what you need to commemorate your loved one. From ornate to simple, urn options have expanded greatly over the years. For pet lovers, companies have even begun offering pet cremation urns. These are not choices anyone wants to make, but if you need a burial urn, make sure you get one of the highest quality, lowest price, and concentrate on more pressing matters.

Change your Look

People gave Michael a lot of slack about his body modifications, but there’s nothing wrong with changing yourself so you can look how you want. In northern Florida, plastic surgeons are hard to find. Potential patients need to focus on a surgeon’s skills and safety- you are not risking only your appearance, but also your well-being. In Panama City, Florida, face lifts and breast implants are not only available from trusted doctors, but they have access to technology like never before.