Nico
Muhly,

Aleph. A List of Things.

1. I know it’s a weird stereotype, but people from Rhode Island really can look at a word like Chachapacassett and pretty quickly (if not instantly) know how it’s pronounced.

2. Alarmingly, somebody at the Boston Globe wrote some snippy thing (which I won’t link to here because, you know, The Cycle Ends Here (for two violas and digital delay)) referencing this blog post and accusing me of not being properly stoked about this weekend’s Fun Thing. It’s funny, to not be excited about an orchestra piece is like not being excited about having a baby or something!

When I was a student and an orchestra piece was Imminent, I was so anxious and nervous and proud and glowing and crazed; as I’ve gotten older the anxious and nervous parts have all but vanished and what’s left is a profound sense of scale – the idea that sixty to eighty people are about to do my bidding for nine minutes, and also to somehow bring their histories as musicians (and herstories, I know, I know; I can see it now: Sexist Homo Writes Racist Overture; Sued by McPhee Estate) to something that embodies my own history as a musician and attendant emotional proclivities…just thinking about it gives me a chill.

RAPTUROUS CHILL.
Not bitchy chill.

What I was trying to get at before is how some arts organizations like the Met have super detailed project pages, in which everything you could ever want to know is hyperlinked and blogged-up in a big, basic font that you can copy into your datebook in moments. On the other side of things, there are websites like the BSO’s (which includes, of course, the Pops), which is a beautiful-lookin’ site with Ken Burns effects &c., but, when it comes time to find out information, you have to do the thing where you click on a date, and a window opens up and you shuffle down, and to the right, and towards the front with your mouse, or godforbid your PC Nubbin of All Sorrows…I just picture my grandparents, in their 80’s and 90’s, being at complete media overload and recoiling in terror at all the moving parts. So, that’s what that is all about. Here’s a Shaker song to get everybody back in the Togetherness Mood that makes Boston our nation’s navel(?)…

[audio:ShakerSong.mp3]
The Boston Camerata
Simple Gifts: Shaker Music

3. My friend Corey Dargel wrote a review for Time Out Chicago! He reviews the Common Sense Composers’ Collective new CD, which I am very excited about. Two of the pieces on the disc have “lowercase titles” (coming around”¦, and then not a single night’s sky) which is a curious thing; I think long and hard about titles, and I try to use turns-of-phrase as a way of signifying that we are in “familiar territory” ““ sort of like hearing somebody who speaks English out of the corner of your ear when traveling. I’m curious to hear what the lower-case counterpart is for people my own age. Looking very much forward to this disc.