Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Two Congrats: Choirs and Museum Shops

Two shouts-out for this post; one congratulations goes to my boyfriend for winning Denver's 'Best Museum Shop' award in Westword magazine. I'm so proud of A! He is the shop manager of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and does a heck of a job making it one of the most fun places to visit. The shop is full of creative books, jewelry, funky gifts, a CD for sale by yours truly, and a giant Tom of Finland XXL book (oh, and the museum itself is pretty cool too).

 (photo credit: Denver.org site)












 Another congratulation to Sigurður Árni Jónsson (Siggi for short) for recording two of his choir pieces in Iceland recently. Siggi and I first met when he sang in a choir for one of my pieces ('Utan Hringsins') on my CD, and we've stayed in touch since I've left Iceland. Well, it's more like I'm unusually bad at keeping in touch, and he's unusually responsive for an Icelander, so we don't have the most frequent communications but they are wordy.

I looked over a couple of Siggi's works for choir and gave him a couple pointers from one composer to another. But all the toil is his own! I'm glad he's got video of them as well as audio. The choir singing looks very comfortable; I've never seen such a relaxed bunch sound so good! The song below, 'Tunglskin' means 'Moonshine'. I'm particularly fond of the secundal-heavy ending of this one.



Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Nuclear Winter Snowglobe Pt. 2

If you haven't yet been obliterated by a nuclear disaster, well then come on in to Midnight Shoveler's Home for Apocalyptic Souvenirs, and pick up your Sunny Florida snow globe today. Complete with igloos and seal cub!

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Two songs about love

Two thoughts about love that I've had stuck in my mind lately.

In listening to Michael Torke's work 'Four Proverbs'; this is the first movement's text: 
'Better a dish of herbs where love is, than a fattened ox and hatred with it.'
I hadn't heard this proverb before, but I really like it. As weird as it is I'm sure this one's going to get added to my everyday repertoire.

In listening to Robyn's 'Body Talk', the track: 'Hang With Me' has the chorus:
'And if you do me right, I'm gonna do right by you
And if you keep it tight, I'm gonna confide in you
I know what's on your mind, there will be time for that too,
If you hang with me.'

I love that the 'con' of the word 'confide' comes on the downbeat of the third beat; not the strongest beat of the measure but it throws off the text just enough that it makes the near-rhyme with 'right' in the previous phrase kind of interesting; in singing the word 'confide' alone, it seems more natural to put emphasis on the second syllable (perhaps because I'm an American-English speaker?) but Robyn's way keeps it confined within the rhythms of the lyrics in that way that only the Swedes can pull off.

Very different genres and thoughts about love, but both kind of romantic, and both pieces quite soothing to the ears. And good for interpretive dance time as well.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Music Spacing

I think my music writing program needs to learn that when I insert measures into the music, I don't want them smooshed all on top of each other, but laid out in a row with the other measures around it. I imagine this music sounds really dense and chaotic, but it's more of a graphic score right now...experimental, mayhaps, but not exactly the piano solo I was going for.


Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Nuclear Winter Snowglobe

I love the idea of seeing a snow globe on the mantle that shows the effects of global warming or a nuclear apocalypse; maybe even zombie invasion under a seemingly fun and glittery bubble sky. I bet a quick google search would prove these items already exists, but I'm going to pretend that I was the first thinker of this thought. Here's what one might look like for Miami; a lovely beach scene with skyscrapers, and a mushroom cloud in the background ready to decimate unfortunate sunbathers. Let's hope to all that is good in the world that what's captured in this snow globe does not become a reality.