YouTube

YouTube is the best thing the internets have come up with. It has brought me so much joy since it was first created and it seems that it just keeps on giving.

There's the evolution of dance.

And then the Filipino prisoner version of the same video.

We can't forget "the guys on treadmills video."

One of my personal favorites: Chad Vader-Day Shift Manager.

Want to revisit the crappy themes from childhood cartoons that seem solely concerned with exposition? Look no further. YouTube has them all: Transformers, G.I. Joe, the ninja turtles and even He-Man.

How about 7 straight minutes of David Caruso's one-liners from CSI: Miami?

I love YouTube so much that I've written whole entries before praising its amazing ability to keep me at my computer for hours at a time.

However, not until recently did I feel a personal connection with Our Lady of The Internet Video. I happened upon some of my own stuff posted there by other people. Most notably a choreographed version of Musica animam tangens with The Choral Project.


They sing it really well and, even though the song doesn't have anything to do with death, it works well as a "soundtrack" to the scene the actors and dancer are portraying. They also did a cool version of my friend Matt Culloton's Famine Song.

Besides Musica, there are two different versions of David's Lamentation floating around as well. One is a really nice performance in Belfast, Northern Ireland by a high school choir from Washington state (Go Knights!)


The other is by a choir called Limited Edition (which Google knew nothing about).


Thank you, YouTube. You have brought me joy as well as a myriad of excuses to be lethargic and drink coffee.

As for actual work, I've got somewhere between 50-60 percent of Renascence done. It's due in 2 weeks and I'm on track. Hee-haw!

out of the frying pan...

It's been WAY too long since I've posted so I'm long overdue. I just started writing a piece on an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem called Renascence. I'm only using an excerpt of it (because it's WAY long) but I think it's going to turn out to be a really nice piece. It will be premiered next spring/winter by the Ankeny High School choir under the direction of Brandon Dean (who graduated, like me, from Luther College...go Norse!). They are a really great group so it's a pleasure to write something for them.

There's really not that much else to report. Since all my trips this year happen near the end of the season I doubt I'll have many photos or posts for a while. On the plus side I just posted a fantastic recording of the Young New Yorkers' Chorus performing their commissioned work, Sleeping Out: Full Moon on the MySpace page. They really did a fantastic job. You can read about my trip to hang out with them here, here and here.

Pavarotti

As a whole bunch of you know, Pavarotti died last week. In a blog like this I don't need to say much about how that voice will never be heard again. This is a bit delayed but...check this out.

Okay, that was just a bit of fun. If you're interested you should check out THE REAL VERSION...Puccini and Pavarotti would have been best friends on a musical level even if they hated everything else about each other.














p.s. Aretha's version is pretty amazing too.