Tag: music

"Like ten honky-tonk pianos being hit by mallets"

A 9 1/2-foot long Bosendorfer concert grand piano comes to a tragicomic end.

Amazing ancient acoustics accounted for

I’ve been to the ancient Greek ampitheatre at Epidaurus, built in the 4th century B.C. The acoustics really are incredible–you can hear a whisper on stage from the very top row. I was there with the Harding University A Cappella Chorus during our European tour in the summer of 1982. (Which was–gulp!–25 years ago, wasn’t …

Continue reading

BIblical illiteracy at the CBC

From a story about a controversial new Victoria production of the George Frederic Handel oratorio Samson that casts Samson as a suicide bomber in 1946 Jerusalem, we get this nugget about the original story: He (Samson) is chained in the temple by the Philistines and forced to witness a sacreligious act. He pulls down the …

Continue reading

Rethinking the piano

A grand piano is a grand piano is a grand piano, at least in the looks department, right? Oh, sure, it might be white or red or black, but they all have roughly the same design. Not any more.The music of shape and the design of sound are created in the M. Liminal model, designed …

Continue reading

"I want to be a prima donna, donna, donna…"

Not all prima donnas are women, you know.

Better fiddling through chemistry

The mystery of a Stradivarius’s extraordinary sound has been solved, and it all comes down to the chemicals used to treat the wood, probably to ward off worms. The unique acoustical results were most likely a happy accident.

The party’s over…

…Betty Comden, of the great Broadway team Comden and Green, has died. Mark Steyn reprints an interview he did with her just a few years ago. UPDATE: And here’s Terry Teachout’s tribute to her, which includes a link to an (archived, and it’ll-cost-ya) profile of Comden and Green he wrote in 1999 for The New …

Continue reading

The first sentence I wrote Sunday…

The members of the band didn’t think Simon understood their music. Janis Joplinning, still… 5,137 words today. I’m sick of the 1960s.

The first sentence I wrote today…

Darby Slick of the Great Society, who saw Big Brother play in late July, said, “It was nearly impossible not to stare constantly at her. She pranced, she strutted, she shrieked, she whispered. The word of mouth was, a star is born.” Janis Joplinning continues…

The first sentence I wrote today…

…had nothing to do with the new novel. I’m now concentrating on finishing up my children’s biography of Janis Joplin, which is what this is from: She arrived home in Port Arthur in May, 1965, and, wrote her sister Laura, “We welcomed her with open arms.” I should have this out of the way by …

Continue reading

My Jimi Hendrix biography is out!

It must be, because I got my author’s copies today. Here’s the cover! It’s published by Enslow, the same folks who published the J.R.R. Tolkien and Orson Scott Card biographies I wrote previously, and who will publish the Janis Joplin biography I’m working on now. Like those, Jimi Hendrix: Kiss the Sky is intended for …

Continue reading

An electronic music stand

How long before something like this becomes de rigeur for symphony orchestras? Wish we’d had it back when I was a French horn player in concert band.

Easy AdSense Pro by Unreal