Weekender Post

The Arts | Hilary Hahn unpacks new works in Seattle | Seattle Times Newspaper

2011-10-18T04:03:00.001-07:00

via seattletimes.nwsource.com

Minnesota Opera commissions 'Doubt'

2011-10-14T03:52:00.001-07:00

via startribune.com

SFist Interviews: 'Heart of a Soldier' Composer Christopher Theofanidis: SFist

2011-10-07T03:37:00.001-07:00

via sfist.com

Annie Leonard Derides Corporate Influences on American Democracy #99%#occupywallstreet

2011-10-05T04:49:00.001-07:00

Annie Leonard's piece on the power of corporations is timeless, and certainly worth revisiting today. Giving speech to corporations regarding our electoral process was a big mistake. Hopefully part of the change we seek will be to reverse our Supreme Court decision.

Vermont mountains inspire new composition » A&E » Press-Republican

2011-09-30T03:31:00.001-07:00

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Saudi women given right to vote | Reuters

2011-09-25T08:08:00.001-07:00

via reuters.com

Interview With Peter Hessler: Behind the Wheel in China - Features - World Hum

2011-09-20T18:35:00.001-07:00

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Waterproof cardboard cooler is recyclable and reusable | Springwise

2011-09-15T18:29:00.001-07:00

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5@5 – Signs you're in a good restaurant – Eatocracy - CNN.com Blogs

2011-09-15T18:14:00.001-07:00

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DEF CON: The event that scares hackers

2011-09-15T17:57:00.001-07:00

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National Symphony Orchestra will commission chamber work by a Kentucky composer

2011-09-15T17:10:00.001-07:00

National Symphony Orchestra will commission chamber work by a Kentucky composer

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FRANKFORT, Ky. (Sept. 12, 2011) — The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Symphony Orchestra in association with the Kentucky Arts Council announce a call for proposals for the commission of a chamber work by a resident Kentucky composer. The composer will be commissioned to write a work of approximately 10-15 minutes duration for no more than six traditional orchestra instruments.

The winning composer will receive $5,000, air travel and hotel accommodations for the premiere performance at the Kennedy Center.

The commission award is a continuation of the National Symphony Orchestra American Residency Project of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The American Residency took place in Kentucky in 2011 with the Kentucky Arts Council as the in-state partner.

The Kentucky Arts Council is coordinating the application process for the Music Composition Commission. For eligibility and submission requirements, go to artscouncil.ky.gov/KentuckyArt/NSO/NSOProposal_2011.pdf. Application materials must be postmarked or hand delivered to the Kentucky Arts Council office by Sept. 28, 2011.

The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, creates opportunities for Kentuckians to value, participate in and benefit from the arts. Kentucky Arts Council funding is provided by the Kentucky General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The National Symphony Orchestra American Residencies is a unique national initiative encompassing the elements of education, outreach, chamber and orchestral performances. American Residencies are sponsored in part by The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

via lanereport.com

Danny Macaskill - Industrial Revolutions - YouTube

2011-09-13T06:04:00.001-07:00

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This is so awesome, you must spend the 4:56 to watch this incredible athlete, Danny Macaskill. Thanks to Josh Spear for posting this.

It's Cheaper To Order Online While Standing In Sears Than To Shop At Sears - The Consumerist

2011-09-13T03:11:00.001-07:00

(the c-side)

In a perfect consumer world, perhaps brick-and-mortar stores would price-match their own websites. Perhaps front-line employees would be permitted to use their own judgment once in a while. In this perfect world, it definitely would not be cheaper and easier to purchase an item for in-store pickup on your smartphone while standing in the store.

Reader Aaron did just that recently at Sears while shopping for a hose, and copied Consumerist when he wrote to the company about his experience.

“
Hello Sears Friends!
I just wanted to thank you for making such an easy to use mobile website - especially from within your very own stores! You see, I had the opportunity to use it today when I was standing in one of your Sears Hardware stores, holding an item in my hand I wanted to purchase.

I visited the Sears Hardware [redacted] today on a quest for a garden hose. Garden hoses are very exciting. I never knew there were so many hose options available to me (vinyl! rubber! polymer!). I found a lovely 50 Ft Never-kink vinyl hose on the shelf which I had researched previously on Sears.com and I knew cost $22.99. Upon ringing up this item at the register, it rang up $25.99 instead of $22.99.

Oh noes!

I alerted your cashier of the $3 difference, who showed my phone to your customer service representative who said "we don't match website prices." Apparently even website prices for your own website. m.sears.com fired up quickly on my smartphone and allowed me to pay $22.99 for the hose I was holding in my hand with Free in-store pickup. Wow- free in-store pickup! It was almost as convenient as paying the cashier at the very aisle I was just standing in!

Thanks again, for making sure that your mobile shopping website works great while standing in your brick and mortar shores. I will surely be trying it again next time one of your illogical, inflexible, customer-unfriendly store policies and employees who can't think outside the box thwart my hose-buying plans.
”

Yes, three dollars is three dollars, and most shoppers aren't savvy enough to even consider doing this. It's still quite inefficient, isn't it?

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If you have a smartphone, get in the habit of scanning for sales. Aaron saved himself a chunk of change.

September 11 Anniversary: Disaster Shapes Innovation

2011-09-12T03:34:00.001-07:00

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We're Americans, we get to work.

Composer Nico Muhly's new 'Body' work

2011-09-04T07:07:00.001-07:00

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Sovereign Man: Finance, Lifestyle Design, Offshore Business and Expat News RSS Feed

2011-08-30T10:55:00.001-07:00

August 30, 2011
Malta

Despite the mind-numbing mantra we constantly hear from our political leaders and central bankers that inflation does not exist, there are certain parts of our lives where even a freeze-dried coffee bean can see that prices are clearly rising: At the grocery store. At the doctor’s office. At the gas pump.

One of these places is also our hallowed institutions of higher learning. It’s no secret that the cost of university education, especially in the United States, is staggering. Tuition at private schools in the US averages $30,000 annually, and students often graduate over $50,000 in debt.

This leads to a fancy form of indentured servitude; students with this kind of debt load are forced to take the first paid work they can find, and they’ll work for the next 14-years of their life just to start back at zero.

Graduate schooling can be even more painful. Top MBA programs can charge $50,000 per year or more, and for those who still cling to the idea of working their way up the corporate ladder, this has become a necessary step.

Especially now in the midst of a severe recession, it has become a new trend for people to head back to school, firm up their credentials, and wait out the economic downturn.

I have a better solution for you to consider: head overseas.

Going to a school overseas ticks a lot of boxes– for one, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper, and you don’t emerge deep in debt like you would back home.

Second, the quality of the education is as good if not better than what you would otherwise receive.

Third, and most importantly, it’s just more interesting. The experience abroad will be much more fulfilling, and it will distinguish you from the pool of other candidates who all have generic resumes.

Let’s say you’re an Ivy League type. Why pay Harvard $52,000 per year when you can go to the University of Cambridge in England for around $19,000 per year? Cambridge is consistently rated as one of the top universities in the world: same quality education, a fraction of the price.

If that sounds like too much, consider a place like Hong Kong University. Tuition at Asia’s top school is around $15,000 per year, and there are plenty of scholarships and financial aid packages available. Not to mention you’d be networking with future movers and shakers in the region.

Still too much? Look at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, whose Rotterdam School of Management is one of the top business schools in Europe. Tuition in the all-English program is around $11,500 per year, 73% less than Notre Dame’s Mendoza School, and 26% less than Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Still too much? Try Qatar University, where there are numerous English-language programs in disciplines such as business and engineering. Tuition for foreign undergraduates is just $4,000 annually, and you’d be spending formative years in one of the world’s most thriving, opportunity-rich economies.

Still too much? Try Albert Einstein’s Alma Mater, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. If you make the cut, ETH’s tuition fee is a whopping $750 per semester for both undergraduate and graduate programs, and the school is typically ranked among Europe’s top 5 universities.

Here’s the bottom line– if you’re facing an uphill battle for prospects and opportunities, get creative; don’t simply follow the same path that everyone else is taking. The world is a big place– stop limiting yourself by geography and start looking overseas for solutions.

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Doingpost

Jeffrey Ching, World-renowned Filipino-Chinese Composer

2011-08-27T04:04:00.001-07:00

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“HEART OF A SOLDIER” – SFOpera Presents World Premiere September 10th

2011-08-24T19:01:00.001-07:00

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Dunboyne composer writes score for movie - News - Meath South - Articles - Meath Chronicle

2011-08-24T16:28:00.001-07:00

via meathchronicle.ie

The Hindu : Life & Style / Metroplus : OFFBEAT - Green mantra

2011-07-27T18:14:00.001-07:00

via thehindu.com

Red Bull Creation: 72 Hours to Build a Crazy Contraption DIY-together

2011-07-15T03:37:00.001-07:00

via pcworld.com

New director Francesca Zambello aims to raise Glimmerglass profile - The Globe and Mail

2011-07-12T18:59:00.001-07:00

via theglobeandmail.com

Swimming suits and opera, interesting. FZ will surely make headlines.

5 Rules of Success From Brooklyn's DIY Masters-Note to Self

2011-07-08T04:15:00.001-07:00

via inc.com

Two Rivers museum, Target Corp. team up for national clothing line | Herald Times Reporter

2011-07-07T06:31:00.001-07:00

via htrnews.com

Local Coolness.

Tour de France Training Program - Thor Hushovd Training Diet - Esquire

2011-07-05T03:41:00.001-07:00

via esquire.com

I was okay with the meal plan, right up until stewed turkey with prunes. Substitution suggestion: grilled chicken with grapes.

Inspiration: A Salvaged Wood Wall in 3 Days with $130 Design*Sponge

2011-07-01T05:56:00.001-07:00

via re-nest.com

This is very doable.

Is the American Dream dead? | Reuters Wealth Read with Caution

2011-06-27T03:49:00.001-07:00

via blogs.reuters.com

This is not meant to be a Monday morning buzz kill. This post is a call to arms. Our American Dream needs to be redefined, not to stick a fork in it. The comments following the piece are just as important to read. Le'ts not roll over just yet.

How to Fast Forward Your Goals

2011-06-19T06:01:00.001-07:00

How to Fast Forward Your Goals

Is your life going sideways? Former Yahoo executive Tim Sanders shares his personal advice on escaping the rut and how confidence can fast-track your career.

By Dave Smith | @redletterdave | Jun 15, 2011

Courtesy Subject

Former Yahoo executive Tim Sanders

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Success isn't really a destination, because you'll never get there. Talk to anyone with millions or billions, they're always thinking of the next thing. Success is a direction, and that direction is forward.

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Nineteen-year-old Tim Sanders was out for a drive, enjoying a beautiful Texas summer day in his red Pontiac Astre when he noticed his uncle's car approach from behind him. The two cars pulled over to the side of the road, and his uncle got out of the car and delivered news no one should ever hear: Tim's father had been murdered.
For years, Sanders grappled with the loss of his father. Feeling crushed and cheated, Sanders' poise was replaced with a burning negativity. He pursued various passions and vocations, but nothing made him happy. Sanders endured nearly 15 of these "sideways years" until his grandmother knocked some sense back into him.
Billye King was a senior in high school when the stock market crashed in 1928. She was raised on the values of generosity and unwavering kindness, and instilled those ideals into her grandson, Tim. These were lessons he forgot in the wake of his father's death, but once he rediscovered the power of his grandmother's morals, he returned with a new attitude and achieved unprecedented success. In five short years, Sanders went from the breaking point to breaking the bank, earning a job as chief solutions officer at Yahoo.
We caught up with Sanders before he headed out to Dallas for the Inc. Leadership Conference starting today. (Get more information on the conference.) Sanders' latest book, Today We Are Rich, describes how to break out of the doldrums and power your career forward. Feeling stuck in neutral is a common sentiment among entrepreneurs, but Sanders believes to have found the perfect recipe for lasting achievement and happiness. To Sanders, the key to everlasting business success all boils down to one word: confidence.
Your book is very inspirational, but also very personal. What inspired you to write this?
It was October 2008. I think the market was down 5000 points that day. I was in Atlanta doing a big speaking gig, and everybody was just so terrified. This is the same group of people I'd seen a few years ago: top of the market, incredibly confident in themselves. And something just triggered inside me that said I need to write a book about how some people are confident at the bottom and others aren't. Some people are the phoenix, others are the fodder.
It just caused me to think about that library on the family farm of classic books written by, who I think were the original motivators: Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich; Claude Bristol, The Magic Of Believing; Dale Carnegie, How To Stop Worrying and Start Living; Norman Vincent Peale, Guide To Confident Living. The last two aren't the most well-known books by those authors, but they were written during this time to help people cultivate confidence through lifestyle design. What I didn't realize until 2008 was that confidence is the underlying foundation for everything: generosity, the willingness to take risks, clarity of thought, being persuasive and charismatic to others—it all comes down to confidence.
There are two kinds: there's circumstantial confidence—or, as Mark Cuban used to always say, "Everyone's a genius during a bull market"—and there's cultivated confidence, a lifestyle design principle that has to do with the information you put in your head, the conversation that comes out of your mouth, and your thoughts and deeds. So that's really what the book's about, and that's why I wrote the book.
Why do people have sideways years?
Success isn't really a destination, because you'll never get there. Talk to anyone with millions or billions, they're always thinking of the next thing. Success is a direction, and that direction is forward. And in our careers, we have those forward leap years. These are years where we either grow internally, in terms of our capability, or externally, in terms of our influence and ability to extract value. So when you're moving forward, you're usually capturing a lot of financial value, you're gaining a lot of assets along the way—many of them intangible, such as intellectual or your network of relationships—and you have a feeling inside yourself that you have big momentum. And it feeds on itself: The more you realize it, the more you feel it, the more it improves your performance, the more you get it, the more you leverage, and that's how people really make leaps in life.
Then there are those times that something has just gone haywire in your head, and you have self-destructive thoughts, and you go backwards in your career. And that's rare, really; most people that think they're going backwards are kind of in between, and those are what we call those "sideways years."
Sideways years is where you have voices in your head sometimes, and they're triggered by voices in the real world, or what I call the "scare merchants"—on cable TV, the authors of "USA Yesterday"—these people that give you reason to be fearful as a way of drawing attention from you. What it does is it triggers the scarcity mindset inside of you. You believe there's not enough to go around, so you go from that I'm-trying-to-move-forward feeling into survival mode. Or, you just lose your fire and you don't have the ambition to move forward, as Napoleon Hill would say.
In these situations, you have a "one step forward, one step backward" type of career. Get a good job, do well initially, peter out a little bit, move to the next job. It's a cycle. But inside yourself, you know you're not moving forward. That's the one thing I'd say about everyone I've talked to who's had sideways years, is when confronted with the thought, "Am I going sideways?" they absolutely know it each and every time.
I see many of these sideways years triggered by economic adversity. It always seems to happen right after a macro-recession where the economy stops growing, and it then changes the buying behavior in almost every market, even ones not adjacent to the epicenter and millions of people come down with personal recessions. They stop growing as people because they personalize the recession.

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Everyone has sideways years. Interesting story.

Beach Drinks - Beach Drink Recipes and Ideas - Esquire

2011-06-18T08:09:00.001-07:00

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How to Avoid U.S. Sauvignon Blancs That Taste Like Your Lawn - BusinessWeek

2011-06-18T07:46:00.001-07:00

How to Avoid U.S. Sauvignon Blancs That Taste Like Your Lawn

Unlike their French cousins, most American Sauvignon Blancs lack subtlety and elegance, but some can be delightful—if you know where to look

by John Mariani

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More often than not when ordering a white wine I go for a Sancerre or Pouilly-Fume, made from the sauvignon blanc grape in France's Loire Valley. I find it as versatile as an aperitif as I do with a wide variety of foods to follow, and the price is usually right.

What I almost never do is order a sauvignon blanc from America, where it is sometimes called fume blanc. All the virtues I find in French sauvignon blancs — their aromatic bouquet, herbaceous, slightly grassy flavor, and lightness of structure — are often squandered in California and Pacific Northwest wineries, which tend to overemphasize herbal notes, making most taste like a newly mown lawn with plenty of dandelions and a little fertilizer thrown in.

Many deliberately imitate the fruit-punch flavors of the enormously successful Cloudy Bay and other sauvignon blancs from New Zealand. Wine Spectator's MaryAnn Worobiec writing about Cloudy Bay found "Tangerine, mango and citrus flavors are pure and focused, smooth, round and wonderfully refreshing, with peach, Key lime pie, mineral and floral elements that really take off on the finish." As I said, fruit punch.

America's sauvignon blancs tend not to be quite that aggressive, but their styles differ radically. Some are very light, others hefty, with up to 14.5 percent alcohol. The big grassy ones are a mouthful, but their charms fade very fast after a few sips.

The varietal's prodigious growth and vigor can lead to an under ripeness that adds to those herby demerits. The grape had a surge in popularity after the late Robert Mondavi re-named it fume blanc in 1968, to avoid confusion with cabernet sauvignon, giving it a sexy French nuance.

Steel and Oak

Many California wineries don't allow much if any skin contact with the grape juice; others do. Some age the wine only in stainless steel; others use oak barrels. In some instances, semillon or other grapes are added.

It's difficult, then, to pin down the American sauvignon blanc style. But with summer and outdoor grilling upon us, a reasonable case can be made for the American varietal as a good choice for big, smoky-flavored meats or fish. With that in mind, I collected a slew of western-state sauvignon blancs of different styles and vintages and tasted them with and without such foods.

Sineann 2007 ($30)

This is a small Yamhill County, Oregon, producer, best known for its pinot noirs. Unfortunately, although the bottle I sampled had a very tight glass closure, the smell was slightly chemical and the wine itself, obvious from its color, starting to oxidize.

Carica Kick Ranch 2007 ($25)

Sonoma Valley's Carica has only been making wine since 2005 but already has a considerable following. The owners insist their sauvignon blancs follow "classic French style" with "crisp acidity." They add 25 percent sauvignon musque and age 10 percent of the first blend in new French oak.

It is indeed a very Sancerre-like sauvignon blanc, with a lovely fresh bouquet, excellent body and clean acids. This was clearly the best of my tasting, perfect with grilled fish.

Windsor Sonoma 2007 ($15)

With vineyards in the warm Russian River Valley, Windsor Sonoma takes advantage of cool summer nights to keep acidity levels high, achieving a judicious 13.9 percent alcohol. The color is very, very pale, the aroma herbaceous, but the overall taste flabby, without those promised acids evident. It's a one-dimensional wine.

Groth 2007 ($26)

Located in Napa's Oakville appellation, Groth has been highly regarded for its sauvignon blancs since the 1980s. The grapes are grown in microclimates that Groth's website says give the wine "a lush, full melon/citrus character in the aroma and in the flavor." Leaving the juice on the skins gives it more body, but you get a high alcohol level of 14.5 percent.

It's big, it's floral, it's pleasantly grassy but not overdone. This is a very fine example of the bold, California style of ripe fruit and balance of acidity.

Turnbull 2008 ($23)

Napa-based Turnbull makes a wide range of wines, sourcing grapes from four Oakville and Calistoga vineyards, and the juice spends an unusually long time on the lees. Very pale in color, with a modest apple-like nose, it begins brightly on the palate but fades fast without any real finish. It would be fine with grilled chicken or even hot dogs.

Spottswoode Estate Vineyard & Winery 2009 ($35-$40)

Napa's Spottswoode specializes in two cabernets and its sauvignon blanc, the latter fermented in small stainless steel barrels, then French oak to add toast and spice.

This is another fine example in the Loire Valley style, a very creamy wine but with tantalizing acid and freshness that would make an excellent aperitif or a wine to go with summer salads and tomatoes with goat's cheese.

John Mariani writes on wine for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.

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Ultimate Garage: The 7 Most Extreme Man Caves - DIY Garage - Popular Mechanics

2011-06-17T06:36:00.001-07:00

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DIY Friday

DIY Metalhead Hacks Steelmaking Process For Lighter, Stronger Cars, Jets | Fast Company

2011-06-17T06:26:00.001-07:00

BBC News - East Yorkshire man builds car out of recycled materials

2011-06-13T04:23:00.001-07:00

via bbc.co.uk

Okay. This is cool. DIYers should enjoy this video. What can you build in your spare time?

A Small Business Owner's Guide to Taking a Vacation | Fast Company

2011-06-13T03:50:00.001-07:00

MeiMei Fox: The Life Out Loud: An Interview with the President of SoulNeeds

2011-06-12T16:17:00.001-07:00

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Take advantage of your free time. Grab the reigns.

Toms Glasses: The Newest Buy-One-Give-One Product From Toms Shoes | Fast Company

2011-06-11T04:32:00.001-07:00

How a Young Entrepreneur Cobbled Together a Business By Recycling Vinyl into Shoes

2011-06-10T04:28:00.001-07:00

via entrepreneur.com

ShareSomeCandy: dana tanamachi

2011-06-08T12:34:00.001-07:00

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The Earth Is Full

2011-06-08T12:32:00.001-07:00

“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”
Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.
This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once. While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana. Why? Because Sana could be the first big city in the world to run out of water, within a decade. That is what happens when one generation in one country lives at 150 percent of sustainable capacity.
“If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees,” writes Gilding. “If you put additional nitrogen into a water system, you change the type and quantity of life that water can support. If you thicken the Earth’s CO2 blanket, the Earth gets warmer. If you do all these and many more things at once, you change the way the whole system of planet Earth behaves, with social, economic, and life support impacts. This is not speculation; this is high school science.”
It is also current affairs. “In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today,” China’s environment minister, Zhou Shengxian, said recently. “The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the worsening ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to the nation’s economic and social development.” What China’s minister is telling us, says Gilding, is that “the Earth is full. We are now using so many resources and putting out so much waste into the Earth that we have reached some kind of limit, given current technologies. The economy is going to have to get smaller in terms of physical impact.”
We will not change systems, though, without a crisis. But don’t worry, we’re getting there.
We’re currently caught in two loops: One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability. At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff. So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories. More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet.
But Gilding is actually an eco-optimist. As the impact of the imminent Great Disruption hits us, he says, “our response will be proportionally dramatic, mobilizing as we do in war. We will change at a scale and speed we can barely imagine today, completely transforming our economy, including our energy and transport industries, in just a few short decades.”
We will realize, he predicts, that the consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model, based on people working less and owning less. “How many people,” Gilding asks, “lie on their death bed and say, ‘I wish I had worked harder or built more shareholder value,’ and how many say, ‘I wish I had gone to more ballgames, read more books to my kids, taken more walks?’ To do that, you need a growth model based on giving people more time to enjoy life, but with less stuff.”
Sounds utopian? Gilding insists he is a realist.
“We are heading for a crisis-driven choice,” he says. “We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we’re not stupid.”

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers- Indianapolis Performing Arts

2011-05-09T09:37:00.001-07:00

via examiner.com

Hey all! Our commissioned piece 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers' was played by the ISO over Mother's Day weekend. Here is the review. Not much about our piece, but 'exquisite' is a pretty nice word for Zhou's piece- Bravo!

Satisfy your inner neat freak - Imprint

2011-05-07T06:36:00.001-07:00

via salon.com

Ursula Sladek: Taking Back The Grid [Video] | Fast Company

2011-05-05T07:22:00.001-07:00

Jennifer Egan | The Days of Yore-Optimist

2011-05-01T09:25:00.001-07:00

via thedaysofyore.com

Great article about working through the early stages of your craft. Hint: "So I would sort of convert disappointment into hope." Brilliant.

Ojai Music Festival names future music directors, including Leif Ove Andsnes and Mark Morris | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

2011-04-22T04:46:00.001-07:00

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Opera residency: music to composers’ ears - Classical Beat - The Washington Post

2011-03-25T05:17:00.001-07:00

via washingtonpost.com

Music review: YouTube Symphony Orchestra's final concert -Experiment

2011-03-22T03:38:00.001-07:00

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Music review: YouTube Symphony Orchestra's final concert

March 21, 2011 | 3:51 pm

As I write this -- 18 hours after watching the YouTube Symphony Orchestra Grand Finale concert -- the only musical thing that sticks in my mind is Romanian bassoonist Laurentiu Marius Darie's excellent playing in Stravinsky's "Firebird" and William Barton's mind-blowing didgeridoo beatbox. It's unfortunate but not terribly surprising.

The concert was performed on Sunday at the opera house in Sydney where the orchestra members chosen via auditions by YouTube had been rehearsing for the week with Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony.

In an irony so acute it's almost painful, what will surely become one of the most-watched classical music concerts in recent memory was never really meant for an audience. Like the final showcase after a week of band camp, when all the parents come to collect their children, Sunday's concert was all about the players' experience. The problem is: If you weren't there it doesn't really mean anything.

Making music is an intimate activity, so musicians tend to become friendly with each other quicker than, say, delegates at a dental convention --that is one of music's great gifts. What digital projections, sand artists, new compositions, star soloists, a massive budget and buckets of goodwill couldn't hide was that it takes more than a week to make an orchestra.

The biggest indicator of inward nature of the evening was the program. By the time the last notes of "Entr'acte II" from Schubert's "Rosamunde" faded away, nearly three hours had passed. As often happens at band camp final concerts, Thomas chose egalitarianism over aesthetics and programmed several small, forgettable pieces featuring individual sections instead of a big symphony.

Undoubtedly it was enormous fun for the brass section to work together on Strauss' "Fanfare for the Vienna Philharmonic," but it's just not very interesting to listen to. Jettisoning all the small pieces and concentrating the limited rehearsal time on "Ein Heldenleben" or Mahler's Fifth would have made for a much more gripping concert.
It might not have been technically perfect, but engaging repertoire would have garnered more enthusiasm from all involved parties than an obscure piece by Australian composer Percy Grainger or an unimaginative new commission.

Of course, quibbles about repertoire can be put down to personal preference in the end, but what's been nagging ever since the YTSO 2011 was announced is the imbalance between rhetoric and results. There has been a lot of talk about how music brings people together across boundaries of culture, class and religion; the democracy of YouTube auditions and the intersection of technology and classical music culture. When all that the ideological chatter is turned off, we should be left with music. Instead there is nothing. At this point in its development the YTSO doesn't have the chops to stand on its own.

In order for the YTSO to grow into something really meaningful, in order for it to stop telling us it's revolutionary and actually change things, the organizers need to decide what it wants the orchestra to be. Band camp? A training orchestra? Good karma for Google?

It may seem that I'm hating on the YTSO for being a bit of fun. For not being serious. That's not the case at all. There are many youth and adult amateur orchestras around the world who have boatloads of fun while still keeping the bar extremely high. The two needn't be mutually exclusive.

At the moment, the YTSO is a unique position. As a privately funded enterprise, it doesn't need to satisfy government requirements or compromise on programming to keep elderly patrons sweet. Its association with YouTube means that the orchestra can easily able to publicize its activities.

In view of all the available resources, the lack of imagination and willingness to settle for a middling performance is depressing.

Another two or three weeks of rehearsal with a mini-tour on the schedule...now that would be something to write home about.

Despite my disappointment, there were a few rays of sunshine. Here are some highlights (full video above):

0:22:18 Cameron Carpenter takes the Opera House organ for a drive and the digital projections get a little crazy.

1:07:25 The most entertaining part of the evening. Berlin Philharmonic hornist Sarah Willis turns intermission commentator. If you're short on time, the very best part is at 1:18:42. Vox populi FTW!

1:29:00 William Barton beatboxes on his didgeridoo.

2:08:40 Ukrainian artist Ksenia Simanova does amazing things with sand.

2:20:10 The orchestra plays the last 3 dances from Stravinsky's "Firebird."

2:35:58 The orchestra plays "Entr'acte II" from Schubert's "Rosamunde" in honor of victims of natural disasters in Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

RELATED

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The YouTube Symphony Orchestra is back for a second year -- but why?

The YouTube Symphony at Carnegie Hall: What did the critics think?

--Marcia Adair

twitter.com/missmussel

Twitter: @culturemonster

Facebook: culturemonster

More in: Classical Music, Marcia Adair, YouTube

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Best takeaway- it takes more than a week to make an orchestra.

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But her schedule has also included dropping in on recording sessions for “Big, Beautiful, Dark and Scary” (2002), with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and listening to test pressings of “Cruel Sister,” a new album of her work due out in March on Cantaloupe, Bang on a Can’s house label. In fact, Ms. Wolfe’s professional juggling act involves keeping a third ball in the air: along with Michael Gordon, who is her husband, and David Lang, she is a founder of Bang on a Can, the composers group that presents an annual new-music marathon, fields a touring band (the All-Stars) and runs a summer institute in North Adams, Mass., known informally as Banglewood.
Ms. Wolfe’s early “Believing” (1997) will be on the program at Bang on a Can’s annual People’s Commissioning Fund Concert, at Merkin Concert Hall on Feb. 10. But at the moment she is focused mostly on a Composer Portraits program on Thursday night at the Miller Theater, in which Brad Lubman will conduct Signal in the first New York performances of the two string orchestra works on Ms. Wolfe’s new recording: “Cruel Sister” (2004) and “Fuel” (2007).
“I’ve been waiting to have these pieces done here for so long,” Ms. Wolfe, 52, said. The scores were commissioned by two German groups, the Munich Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble Resonanz.
“Fuel,” a collaboration with the filmmaker Bill Morrison, is “less about the politics of fuel,” Ms. Wolfe said, “than about the fact that everything is dependent on it.” And “Cruel Sister” is an almost programmatic piece — something unusual in Ms. Wolfe’s catalog — based on an old British ballad about two sisters, one of whom murders the other to win the love of a suitor. Though it quotes the ballad in neither melody nor text, it follows the story’s contours with a painterly precision.
“I often think of extramusical things,” Ms. Wolfe said of her approach to composing, “but I rarely think so much about narrative. Part of the reason I got interested in music is because it was beyond words. When I got this commission from the Munich Chamber Orchestra, I thought, ‘Great — it’s the next step after the string quartets.’ And a few weeks later, they called and said, ‘Could you make this go with a folk tale or a fairy tale?’ It was a foreign concept for me, so I said, ‘Let me think about it.’
“I was going to be open-minded, but I didn’t want to be boxed in. And while I was thinking about it, I remembered this song that I heard in college, a track from a Pentangle album. And I wound up, to my surprise, not just using the gestalt of the song, but really following the emotions and the arc of the story.”
Both “Cruel Sister” and “Fuel” are couched in the rhythmically propulsive post-Minimalist style that drives most of Ms. Wolfe’s music, though both also have haunting dramatic touches. It is easy to hear the influence of Steve Reich in her work, as she happily admits. Mr. Reich suggests that these days the influence goes both ways.
“I get a general feeling that what she and Michael and David have done was certainly influenced by what I did earlier on,” Mr. Reich said of Ms. Wolfe and her Bang on a Can colleagues, Mr. Gordon and Mr. Lang. “But what’s interesting is that they’ve come up with techniques I haven’t thought of, and which I sometime may steal from them. I was listening to ‘Cruel Sister’ and admiring her use of the open strings of the fiddle, which give the piece a kind of folk feeling. And when that open-fifths sound is replaced by extreme clusters, it’s very effective. I wouldn’t do that. I mean, I haven’t done it. But you know what? I’ll put it away for a rainy day.”
Since “Cruel Sister,” Ms. Wolfe has looked to other folk songs for inspiration. In “Steel Hammer” (2009), composed for the Bang on a Can players and the Trio Mediaeval, the (mostly) early-music vocal group, she drew on dozens of variants of “John Henry” and included some of the instruments she played during her years as a college folk singer in the scoring: a mountain dulcimer, for example. This time she quoted from the melody’s refrain but only obliquely. “With a Blue Dress On” (2010), for a singing violinist and eight recorded fiddle tracks, is also based on a folk tune, and she said that the piece she is writing for Ethel will have folk roots too.
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Creative Commissioning

2011-01-23T05:30:00.001-08:00

She commissioned a composer to write something especially for her group instead.
Ms. Shim, 34, who makes a living teaching and performing chamber music, started a fund-raising campaign to pay for the commission using an online financing Web site, Kickstarter. The aim was to raise $5,000 for a composer, Daniel Felsenfeld, to write a 10-minute trio for flute, cello and piano.
Within six weeks, Ms. Shim had amassed $5,290 through contributions ranging between $15 and $250, from 130 donors.
Ms. Shim said that she expected Mr. Felsenfeld, who is based in New York, to deliver the piece by April and that she had made a commitment to play the work at the Trinity Chamber Concerts series in Berkeley sometime later this year or next.
“Looking for grants would have taken several years, but going the Kickstarter route was much faster,” Ms. Shim said. “I also now have a built-in audience of donors who might further their investment by buying a CD or coming to the concert.”
Her method differs substantially from the traditional system for commissioning new works. Typically, the artistic head of a music organization approaches a composer about writing a piece several years before its premiere and then hands off the negotiations to executives who raise money to pay the composer’s fee.
This system is standard among the world’s top-tier music organizations. The San Francisco Symphony finances most of its commissions, which cost up to $100,000 per work, through dedicated funds. Its latest new piece, “Uriah,” an orchestral work commissioned three years ago from the Israeli composer Avner Dorman with money from a symphony fund, will receive its world premiere at Davies Symphony Hall on Jan. 26.
But as a result of the rise of collaborative financing tools and social-networking technologies, the commissioning process has become more multifaceted.
“When I was a student, there was a sense of hierarchy among ways of creating music,” said Ed Harsh, the president of Meet the Composer, a support organization for the creation of new musical works. “The compositional world is a lot flatter now.”
The biggest shift seems to be happening on the financial front, partly resulting from the downturn in arts philanthropy.
“To get even a few hundred dollars, one often has to jump through multiple hoops, fill out paperwork and submit work samples,” said Sarah Cahill, a pianist who lives in Berkeley and has commissioned pieces by composers like Terry Riley and Meredith Monk over the last 14 years. “Sometimes it’s just easier to take that few hundred dollars from one’s own bank account.”
Arts organizations are increasingly looking to members of the public to bridge the philanthropic chasm.
Service organizations that support the commissioning of new works, like United States Artists and Meet the Composer, have established micro-philanthropy projects that allow individuals to contribute to funds for new works through online donations. Contributors typically receive perks like a free recording of the finished piece.
Meanwhile, Chanticleer, an all-male choral ensemble based in San Francisco, is establishing a “Commissioning Club” to help finance new works. In exchange for contributing to the fund, members get insider access to the development process.
The arrangement propagates a feeling of ownership in the creative process even for the smallest donors.
“When you have many people with a personal stake in the work, they get to feel like they are part of an event in the same way any moneyed impresario does,” Mr. Felsenfeld said.
Another development is that orchestras are more commonly entering into consortia with each other, particularly in the creation of large-scale works. For example, the Oakland East Bay Symphony recently partnered with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Performances, a Bay Area presenting organization, to commission a violin concerto by the composer Billy Childs.
“Collaborating enables us to help create new music for a nominal amount of money,” said Ruth Felt, the president of San Francisco Performances.
These consortia not only ease the financial burden on music organizations, but composers like them, too.
“What composer doesn’t want to have his pieces played in different settings and encountered by a variety of audiences and musicians?” said Mason Bates, a composer based in Berkeley who has written works for the San Francisco Symphony.
While well-established composers like Mr. Bates are continuing to win commissions from major musical institutions, the micro-philanthropy trend is undeniably opening up more opportunities for emerging composers.
But mid-career composers and those with respected credentials but little broad-based appeal might not fare so well in the current climate.
“My sense is that you go up the ladder a couple of rungs and then it’s a big climb to get to where the next opportunities are,” said Frances Phillips, the program director of the Creative Work Fund, a grant-making body that supports collaborative art projects in the Bay Area.
Meanwhile, at the crowd-funding end of the scale, life is far from easy. “I have to put in a lot of time and do an extreme amount of self-promotion,” Ms. Shim said. “Kickstarter isn’t a magic cure.”

cveltman@baycitizen.org

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That would be you.

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Odds are, you're doing it poorly.

If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talked to you, you'd quit. If you had a boss that wasted as much as your time as you do, they'd fire her. If an organization developed its employees as poorly as you are developing yourself, it would soon go under.

I'm amazed at how often people choose to fail when they go out on their own or when they end up in one of those rare jobs that encourages one to set an agenda and manage themselves. Faced with the freedom to excel, they falter and hesitate and stall and ultimately punt.

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