Yesterday, I posted a bit about playing for underserved audiences, or rather, my desire to play for them. As the response to an email I quoted it’s an issue of bringing a certain type of live entertainment to groups that might not otherwise have an opportunity (or that have fewer opportunities) to ever experience an [...]
Tagged economics, ethnic minorities, health and nutrition, mission statement, underserved audiencesI was tempted to call this the “Mahler Symphony No. 1 in D Major Project” but thought that might incline me to have an end point for the project. As it stands, what I’ve decided to do (since I’ve decided I should go ahead and do this performance of Mahler 1 with the IU Southeast [...]
Tagged Blumine, Gustav Mahler, Leider eines fahrenden Gesellen, Mahler Project, Mahler Symphony No. 1 in D Major, TitanWhile reading some research about rhythm cognition I came across a link to a chapter (“How Music Organizes Time”) of Robert Garfias’ book. This is quote is pretty self-explanatory! In teaching us to see more accurately in order to draw realistically, Betty Edwards in her book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, advises [...]
I’ve been following Diana Deutsch’s work for some years and had been really intrigued with her studies done on speakers of tonal languages (e.g. Mandarin, Vietnamese, and my native Thai) and the seemingly higher proportion of individuals with so-called “Perfect Pitch” (long considered to be a genetic rarity). Here’s a recent article chronicling her work. [...]
Tagged Biology, Genetics, Nurture versus Nature, pedagogy, Perfect PitchI posted a bit about “authenticity” and the issues modernization and Westernization in indigenous Art Music traditions previously. Here’s a quote from Ali Jihad Racy’s article, “Musical Aesthetics in Present-Day Cairo,” that illustrates a broad pan-Arabic sense of some of the issues with descriptive phrases used in value judgments about musical activities: Common in Cairo [...]
Tagged Ali Jihad Racy, Arabic aesthetics, Arabic Music, Egyptian music, fannan asilSo I’m in the middle of “Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Syria” by Jonathan Holt Shannon who’s one of the leading experts on Arabic music (from an academic standpoint). What I’m really struck by is the story, and I hear and read this time and time again, of the issue of Modernization [...]
Tagged "Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Syria", Arabic Music, Jonathan Holt Shannon, Middle Eastern Music, Mugam, Ottoman music, Syria, Turkish music, Western Classical Music