While the selection of shows is disappointingly small — cheesy Pat Metheny, cheesy Japanese jazz-fusion, or a potentially cool concert with Joe Sample — those of you in Seoul might nonetheless might be interested in seeing something at the upcoming Seoul Jazz Festival. One interesting thing is that some of the local opening acts actually look better than some of the foreign ones. I’d much sooner see a show by Bae Jung-Eun’s trio than see her open for a trio show by Pat Metheny. But I guess I can see a Bae Jung-Eun show anytime, right? Right? Anyone know? I’m …
Category: MUSIC
They Didn’t React As Expected
In this fascinating piece titled Pearls Before Breakfast is discussed an experiment conducted by the Washington post regarding how people perceive music in public spaces. What happens when one of the best classical musicians in America puts on a baseball cap and goes busking in Washington, D.C.? The article raises some really interesting questions about American culture, about art, about contexts for art. It brings to mind a question that’s been bugging me: is the blog a good context for writing to be presented? I’m beginning to think it isn’t.
Night Music, With David Sanborn?
Remember that show? Man, I was so into that show, but I never saw Bill Frisell on it. Damn! You know, for all that the 80s were a sad, embarrassing joke of a decade, you couldn’t have a TV show like Night Music anymore… when it’s all just about having music shows on TV. Of course, you shouldn’t need it in a vibrant culture — there’d be interesting live music everywhere — but living in Saskatchewan, and being into this kind of stuff, being crazy about saxophone and creative music — different music! — and never getting to hear much …
House Concert
Went to a concert last weekend. It was a show at which Kang Tae Hwan and Park Chang-soo performed. “How did you know about him?” my girlfriend asked me, after the show. I had to be honest and admit that I have no idea how I first learned of Kang, but I know that anyone who’s searching for local free jazz in Korea is finally going to encounter his name. His name, but not his CDs. They’re very hard to find (more about that later). Kang’s approach to the saxophone reminds me of nobody else, really. Imagine taking the amount …
Corea and Burton, Live in Seoul
Well, last weekend Lime and I went to the concert to which she got me tickets for my birthday. That show was the Chick Corea and Gary Burton live show in Seoul, March 10th. The show was pretty good, really, but there was something about it that was a little underwhelming. I mean, let’s face it, Chick Corea knows what he’s doing at the piano. Yet some of it felt a little, I don’t know, phoned in, or maybe emailed in. No, wait, that’s not quite fair either. It’s also just partly something about Chick Corea. He’s one of those …
Listen to My Compositions (If You Dare)
I’ve added some more recordings to the archive of all music I’ve participated in. The recordings that just became available to me are all from the period of 1995-96, which was my most prolific year of composing music during undergraduate music studies. There are five pieces: a bass clarinet duet, a piece for solo piano, a piece for electric guitar and harpsichord (with a title referring to the work of H.P. Lovecraft), and a couple of pieces for large ensemble. I’ll be working on getting more recordings of my work in the next year, but it’s come to my attention …
Sugungga, Translation and Translatability, and Something Weirdly Beautiful
Sugungga (Soo-goong-ga, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the standard form of Korean romanzation, which is as opaque as pinyin to those who cannot read Hangeul) is a pansori, of which I recently bought (a 3-CD set) and to which I have been listening. Yep, that’s the cover to the right. Don’t click that link yet. Read it later. For now, bear with me. People say that this form is “Korean traditional opera” (always “Korean traditional”, not the other way around as we’d say in native-speakers’ English). I understand why they compare it to opera, of course — …
Welcome to the Server Room (to the tune of Welcome to the Jungle)
On one of the mailing lists I was on, someone riffed on the idea of a certain Guns’n’Roses song being adapted for sysadmins. I came up with all the lyrics except the first line. Fun like this is why I am still on this mailing list… and why I don’t sleep enough. Welcome to the server room, we’ve got fun and games… We got all the passwords here, for all the usernames. We are the people that can find Whatever you download If you got the login, honey, We got your node Chorus: In the server room Welcome to the …
What the Hell?
Okay, I usually am relatively neutral about remixes. Some are good, most are okay, some are stinkers, and most of the time, unless nothing is really added to a song by remixing it, I fail to see the point. Now, while editing a huge brainhog of a document — a thing for one of the other offices on campuses, which looked like it was 50 pages (but 30 pages of that is a strangely formatted chart that only took me a few minutes to tidy up and correct thoroughly, thank goodness), I thought I’d put on the Courtney Pine remix …
Guess What Shuffle Demons Song is in my Head?
Not only because Kevin’s link to thi post by C. Buddha, either? Today, I met Lime in Hong Ik and we had dinner — Vietnamese — and a coffee. She’s very much enjoying the Korean translation of the Jared Diamond book I got for her, and she returned the giftiness with some nice Korean CDs from Purple Records. After that, we went our separate ways, she to the hospital and I to Bucheon. I had considered taking the slow train to Bucheon, and just sitting and reading, but thought, oh, if I catch the Rapid train to Dongincheon, which stops …