I sang this morning with other members of the Bach Collegium San Diego on the KBPS radio show These Days. Our director, Ruben, and two singers, Anne-Marie and Martha, talked about how we’re going for Baroque this weekend in singing all six of Bach’s motets.
Also featured: comparisons between zoning out while singing Bach and wandering into a dark alley in Leipzig (followed by the Brandenburg Boys? You don’t want to mess with them!)
Six Bach Motets BWV 225-230 & Gala Reception
Ruben Valenzuela, Music Director
Vocalists of the Bach Collegium San Diego
Daniel Zuluaga, Lute
Shanon Zusman, Violone
Michael Sponseller, organ
Saturday, 20 February
St James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church
743 Prospect Street, La Jolla CA 92037
(Gala Reception to immediately follow in Van Schaick Room)
Sunday, 21 February
Loyola Marymount University (Murphy Recital Hall)
1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles CA 90045
Concerts at 7pm
$35 Reserved Patron
$25 General Admission
$15 Student/Senior
For tickets or other inquiries: online or (619) 341.1726
Since its founding in 2003, the Six Bach Motets have been at the core of the BCSD’s repertoire, but never ALL SIX! The motets will be performed with vocal ensembles ranging from 4-16 voices.
The San Diego concert will be immediately followed by our annual Gala Benefit Reception in the Van Schaick Room of St. James by-the-Sea. Plan now to attend both!
For combination ticket packages are available for both concert and gala. Please refer to our website for details.
I’m singing again!
Orchestra Nova
Conducted by Jung-Ho Pak
Bach Collegium San Diego
Ruben Valenzuela, Music Director
Guest Artists:
Virginia Sublett, Soprano
Katherine Lundeen, Alto
Robert MacNeil, Tenor
John Polhamus, Bass
St. Paul’s Cathedral, San Diego
Thursday, December 10, 7:30 p.m.
St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, La Jolla
Friday, December 11, 7:30 p.m.
Solana Beach Presbyterian Church, Solana Beach
Saturday, December 12, 7:30 p.m.
This season’s Masterpiece Messiah is an encore presentation of our dramatic video experience of the great masterpieces of art
complementing the most famous of all oratorios, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Joined again by Bach Collegium San Diego, our
interpretation has become well-known for its original 18th-century period approach, creating an unforgettable emotional experience that
goes beyond most traditional performances.
New this year and by popular demand, we’re adding a performance at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Downtown San Diego. Don’t miss out on one of the hottest tickets in town during December. Buy tickets online or call 858-350-0290.
From The Information Theory of Emotions of Musical Chords, posted on ArXiV today:
My basic hypothesis is as follows. While perceiving a separate musical chord, the value of a relative
objective function L that is directly related to the main proportion of pitches of its constituent
sounds is generated in the mind of the subject. The idea of an increasing value of the objective
function ( L>1 ) accompanied by positive utilitarian emotions corresponds to a major chord, while
the idea of a decreasing value of the objective function ( L<1 ) accompanied by negative utilitarian
emotions corresponds to a minor chord.
I naturally thought of The Mathematics of Love:
Via Animikwaan, a video of Bobby McFerrin jumping around to get the audience to give him a pentatonic cantus firmus, as it were…
Kyle Gann had a rather disturbing revelation about how copyright intersects with scholarship, and in particular scholarship about experimental music:
… you are no longer allowed to quote texts that are entire pieces of art. This means I’ve been trying to get permission simply to refer to Fluxus pieces like La Monte Young’s “This piece is little whirlpools in the middle of the ocean,” and Yoko Ono’s “Listen to the sound of the earth turning.” And of course, Yoko (whom I used to know) isn’t responding, and La Monte is imposing so many requirements and restrictions that I would have to add a new chapter to the book, and so in frustration well past the eleventh hour, I’ve excised the pieces from the text.
Normally, I’d expect the publishing companies to be the most obstructionist, as this commenter said:
Just last week I found out that, even for a thesis that will not be published, Shirmer [sic] now asks money to permit me to reproduce musical excerpts. If I paid every institution (libraries for manuscripts / publishers for printed matter) that holds rights to the excerpts that I need to reproduce to illustrate points and arguments, my dissertation would cost in excess of 15.000US dollars for permissions alone.
Some months ago I was warned that I may not have had the right to TAKE NOTES while studying Cowell manuscripts at the LOC in 1998.
Apparently, however, the artists themselves are also the problem. Way to make yourselves even more irrelevant…
I was listening to the song “Gasoline” by The Airborne Toxic Event on Pandora today:
I noticed that it samples the music from the incredibly popular Telugu condom commercial:
Did anyone else hear this immediately?
I’m singing with the Bach Collegium San Diego in this concert coming up next month (coincidentally the same week as ITA — fun fun!) If you live in the San Diego area, I encourage you to come!
Franz Joseph Haydn THE CREATION 1798
Sung in English with a newly edited text by Paul McCreesh
A collaboration between the Chorus of the Bach Collegium San Diego and the San Diego Chamber Orchestra
Ruben Valenzuela, conductor
Soloists
Anne-Marie Dicce soprano
Vladimir Maric tenor
John Polhamus bass
Monday 9 February 2009 at 7:30pm
Sherwood Auditorium (Museum of Contemporary Art)
700 Prospect Street, La Jolla 92037
Tuesday 10 February 2009 at 7:30pm
The Del Mar Country Club
6001 Clubhouse Drive, Rancho Santa Fe 92091
Friday 13 February 2009 at 7:30pm
St Paul’s Cathedral, San Diego
2728 6th Avenue, San Diego 92103
We begin the new year with a performance of Haydn’s monumental oratorio The Creation to mark the 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death. The Creation is often considered Haydn’s greatest work through its bold use of orchestral color, adventurous harmony, exceptional rhythmic and melodic inventiveness, and overall unity with an almost operatic vividness and power. Tickets available online.
You know who you are. More egregious copyright violation on YouTube… Horace Silver’s “Filthy McNasty.”
I’m blogging up a storm, it seems.
I was re-listening to Thomas Hampson singing Samuel Barber’s Despite and Still, and realized that the song “Solitary Hotel” is a Barber-ized (but not barbarized) tango — the loping and chromatic triplets are a strange contrast to the text from Ulysses, but they share the same pensive suspension.
Of course, my favorite song is probably “A Green Lowland of Pianos”: (text by Czeslaw Milosz, after the Polish of Jerzy Harasymowicz):
in the evening
as far as the eye can see
herds
of black pianosup to their knees
in the mire
they listen to the frogsthey gurgle in water
with chords of rapturethey are entranced
by froggish, moonish spontaneityafter the vacation
they cause scandals
in a concert hall
during the artistic milking
suddenly they lie down
like cowslooking with indifference
at the white flowers
of the audienceat the gesticulating
of the ushers
An Ergodic Walk 