JASON WEINBERGER

GPOYW Seeing the world [and its four-legged inhabitants] through his eyes EDITION

If you haven’t already grabbed Big Beautiful Dark and Scary from Bang on a Can’s 25th anniversary website not to worry – it is still available for free download. Absolutely worth it for the fun listening, if not to add to the wonderful commentary stream occasioned by the album’s offering. So far the highlight for me is new work from Dirty Projectors music director [and fellow Yale grad] David Longstreth – three tight, beat-driven tunes including this head nodder, Instructional Video.

Real talk from Charles Ives, parting with the Pulitzer Prize money he was awarded for the Third Symphony in 1947; half went to Lou Harrison, who had only recently conducted the premiere of the piece. The fact that Ives could afford the bravado hardly diminishes his trademark badassery.

[via wwnorton]

I fear Marco Arment may be right about SOPA and its ilk. I know he’s right about the big studios and the MPAA.

Busted! Composer Bernard Hermann caught snoozing by Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Psycho.

[via oldhollywood]

Odds are Prokofiev’s picaresque Peter and the Wolf was one of your memorable early experiences of live ensemble music. Shockingly, your kids may not enjoy that same opportunity after yesterday’s disastrous ruling in a case involving international orchestral music and other foreign works removed from the public domain:

In 1994 Congress changed U.S. copyright law to conform with an international copyright agreement. The new law reapplied copyright to millions of works that had long been free for anyone to use without permission.

Mr. Golan had argued that taking works back out of the public domain would hinder creativity by making artists more cautious about remixing or otherwise using works, fearing their status could change in the future in a way that required payment to copyright holders. More broadly, academics have expressed concern that upholding the 1994 law would make it much more difficult to write books or assemble course readings without having to deal with a host of legal hurdles – or just prohibitively expensive fees – to avoid violating copyrights.

The decision – in which intellectual property rights holders won big over orchestras, performing arts organizations, creatives and scholars – likely means that a generation’s worth of cultural treasures will become less accessible to the broader public.

And we pay taxes for this? First Congress through legislation and now the Supreme Court in this ruling: Keeping us safe, apparently, from the likes of Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

Arresting graphic work by Jonathan Herman connecting instruments and environment. I came across his designs for Australia’s Victoria Symphony last week when I joined Behance.

[Check out a collection I’m curating featuring this and other excellent examples of orchestra-inspired design.]

The White House, responding to a petition on the woefully misguided SOPA bill up for vote in Congress this week.

[via barackobama]

An illustration from Black Cat Bone by graphic artist and good friend Gary Kelley. Gary also used the image his video piece for Duke Ellington’s MLK, commissioned and presented by the WCFSO and particularly appropriate today on what would have been the eighty-third anniversary of the civil rights leader’s birth:

Wes Anderson meets Benjamin Britten in this just-released trailer for the forthcoming Moonrise Kingdom. Perfect match.

With Rite just around the corner I might have to start drinking Ogogoro. Neat.

[Drinkify found via @slarkpope né braiker]

From an 1872 letter sent to Giuseppe Verdi by Prospero Bertani, a patron of early performances of Aida:

The opera contains absolutely nothing thrilling or electrifying, and if it were not for the magnificent scenery, the audience would not sit through it to the end. It will fill the theatre a few more times and then gather dust in the archives. Now, my dear Signor Verdi, you can imagine my regret at having spent 32 lire for these two performances.

Bertani requests reimbursement of his expenses and Verdi complies.

Relive the entire saga in the participants’ own words at the amazing Letters of Note [from the curator of orchestra21 favorite Letterheady.]

GPOYW Fairly certain this is the best feeling in the world EDITION

Doug Stewart says:

This is what your iTunes equalizer should be set to. Whether you’re using your poor laptop speakers, the default Apple earbuds, or fine pieces of engineering from a company that gives a damn, this removes the ‘flatness’ of a dead EQ and makes whatever you’re listening to sound more like itself.

Agreed! I keep the preamp slightly lower and may eventually tweak a few of the settings but am generally impressed. If only it were possible [ahem, Apple] to run custom EQs natively on iPhone/iPad without having to preset all of one’s iTunes tracks.

[Found via scatterbrainedboy]

The intrepid new music collective is offering its double album Big Beautiful Dark and Scary for download in exchange for a memory of your encounter with BOAC’s work or just a statement of interest.

[via @alexrossmusic]

Managed to get in plenty of great riding during my recent mid-winter stay in LA [despite battling some sickness]. As you can see from the vertical feet my favored terrain is easier to come by in SoCal than back in Iowa!

Set aside a few moments this weekend to drift off into a Sea of Pianos.

[via The Kid Should See This]

I hope so – it’s certainly about time.

[via claytoncubitt]

The magnificent George Peabody Library in Baltimore, photographed by Candida Hofer. As a student at the conservatory next door my preferred score study spot was a quiet desk tucked into one of those balconies; I was subsequently fortunate enough to lead a memorable Baltimore School for the Art Chamber Players concert on the library floor.

[via kateoplis]