Monday, July 25, 2011

Monday links

Check out this awesome page listing all the grad programs in conducting in the country. Hat-tip to Thoughtful Gestures.

The UU Musicians' Network has a new blog.

Alex Ross encourages us to pay attention to the new composers chosen by the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. He also highlights a blog called "Superconductor" which has me KICKING myself about the name of this blog. That name is so much better! Superconductor looks pretty cool, it is mostly reviews of performances in NYC. I particularly enjoyed the opinionated entries on the doings at New York City Opera.

Apparently musicians are smarter than you Muggle fools. I always find these articles somewhat irritating. Sorry, I know a lot of my musician friends on Facebook were getting a kick out of it. But aside from providing a dangerous opportunity for "us" to feel smug and superior to "them", let's be frank, music is worth doing regardless of any positive side effects such as how we perform on vocabulary tests. I'm sure most of us would still do it even if it increased our risk of clogged arteries or whatever. It bugs me whenever articles come out about the positive side effects of doing music, because it takes the focus off the main point of doing music, which is that music is a wonderful emotional expression of beauty and an awesome endeavor and makes people happy.

Speaking of things that will make you happy, I found a wonderful, wonderful website called "Awkward Classical Music Photos." (Hat-tip to GS on my Facebook page!) When people who primarily deal in sound suddenly have to market themselves visually, the results can be pretty silly! (I have been in a few awkward photo shoots myself, so I am totally in a glass house here.)

3 comments:

  1. I like "current conductor" because it (perhaps inadvertantly) references the sort of Tai Chi flavored energy that is such a big deal (to me) when thinking about the relationship of a conductor to an ensemble.

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  2. Oh, thank you for that awkward classical musicians site - truly boggling! I appear to have lost about 40 mins of my life to it, but I think it was worth it.

    liz

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  3. @ Liz:

    I'm so sorry it took me so long to publish your comment! I didn't realize it had gotten caught in the filter, I thought it had automatically published.

    Glad you liked that site! I'm a little worried that someday I'll end up on it myself, but really, there's only so much time musicians can devote to visual design, right? :)

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