Dial "M" for Musicology
Updated :

Sound Editing Oscar
JWB here: The New York Times published a nice article by Virginia Heffernan on the nominees for Academy Award in sound editing. The article opens with this evocative bit of writing on The Hurt Locker, which I agree should win...

Dial H
As in Huntsville and Horrific. At this moment, details are still unclear about the appalling shooting at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, where one Amy Bishop, to all indications a rising superstar in the Biology Department, was denied tenure....

Hope for the Weary
Reprinted, with permission, is an E-Mail I received yesterday from a graduate student: -------------------- ATTN: ABIGAIL VAN BUREN

 Dear Abby,

 The fall semester ended in early December and it has been approximately seven weeks since I was last academically bitch...

By Request
On this palindromic date we begin the news semester, which promises to be an eventful and pressure-filled one for me (trip to Poland, concerto, etc.). Friend Lisa requests that I put the cover of my Chopin book up and announce...

Oswalt on teaching
I spent the end of last semester in a frenzy of activity punctuated by moments of pure unmotivated idleness. While procrastinating one day I discovered the comedian Patton Oswalt, who is smart and funny and whose standup is viewable on...

In Praise of Musical Obsessions
Perhaps I have mentioned this before, but among what I consider to be Universal Musical Experiences is the obsession. The obsession can be a single piece, often a short one, or perhaps a popular song, that simply takes over your...

Boy, Drummer, Little
Friend Eric sends a link to this Lewis W. Thompson article about “The Little Drummer Boy,” originally from the Los Angeles Times and reprinted on Christmas Eve by the New York Times. Thompson characterizes the little tune as one of...

Holiday Music: Jump-Off-A-Bridge Edition
Friend Eric (I initially typed “Fiend Eric” by accident and, in fact, almost left it that way) passes along the following: a Chanuka song written by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, someone whose politics, behavior, and self-righteousness I absolutely detest....

All I Want For Chanuka
Ever heard of Geoff Smith and his “fluid piano”? Dig this article and video. Now, forget all the experimenting-with-eastern-scales-a-genuinely-new-world-awaits claptrap. That’s as may be; I’ll leave that to the—um—visionaries. I’ve got my bona fides, after all; I published an article...

Philly AMS breakdown
So I'm back from the annual American Musicological Society meeting. As usual I feel like I lived about 3 weeks in 4 days, so where to begin? Maybe with a song. Jake Cohen, a musicology grad student and Dial M...

Consciousness
There was a young man who said "though it seems that I know that I know, what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know." --Alan Watts (I...

The Dark Within The Dark
At the beginning of my final year—quarter, actually: fall 1979—enrolled at UCSB, there appeared a green, hyper, talkative violist and composer, an odd mix of self-confidence and neurotic insecurity named Gregory Michael Amov. For reasons never became clear, Greg apparently...

Datafeed Software
Amazon RSS Feeds