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.

bring that beat back

It's a slow blog day. Here's Gracie Shank jammin' out on the family Baldwin. (Babies doing adult things are apparently really cute.) 2 generations of Shanks have tickled these ivories. Will she be the third? Stay tuned, peeps. She's only 1 so it might be a while before we get a set-in-stone answer on this one.

done...and on to new responsbilities and a breath of fresh air

I finished up Iron Sharpens Iron last Thursday and sent it off to the commissioner the next morning. More news about this piece as it becomes available since one of the contract stipulations was that I have to keep the details of where/when/who a bit of a secret. It was commissioned by some choir members as a surprise for their longtime director so we'll see if it completely crashes and burns. Either way they'll still have to pay, right? (Insert maniacal laugh here.)

It's nice to be (momentarily) done because school is starting back up and it's time to teach some music. I've given myself until September 1 to take a short break before starting in on the next piece for Ankeny High School (near Des Moines, Iowa). Then it's on to finish the Color Madrigals for The Singers: MN Choral Artists. It will be really nice to get that one in the can as well since it's turned into a 6-movement work composed and premiered over a year. But it will be my first "major" work so I'm psyched to have it out there.

After that it will be a nice, long break (unless something comes up...which it always does) where I can start on something I've been meaning to do for a long time.

In other news I just went out and bought:

Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds: Live at Radio City--I love these guys. I learned to use a pick listening to DMB records and have been a fan for a while. And if you've never heard of Tim Reynolds then behold his majesty (too bad this clip cuts out right as he goes into a Zeppelin cover). It's hard to believe I used to be able to play this piece (albeit much slower and not as accurately as him...maybe that means I couldn't play it...hmm). And if it isn't impressive enough he shreds this bastard out on a 12-string.

Sufjan Stevens: Illinois--This guy has said he will write one album for each state of the Union and Michigan is the only other one finished so far. He's a total genius. Listen to this. You won't hear that on Top 40 radio any time soon. It's just too creative. Track 2 takes the cake for the longest title I've ever seen: The Black Hawk War, Or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization And Still Feel Good About Yourself In The Morning, Or, We Apologize For The Inconvenience But You're Gonna Have To Leave Now, Or, 'I Have Fought The Big Knives And Will Continue To Fight...

A ton of Rufus Wainwright CDs. This guy is amazing. How many songwriters working today count tin pan alley as one of their major influences? I only know one: him. He's a total musical auteur with a completely unique harmonic sense. He's also been commissioned by The Met to write an opera alongside composers like Wynton Marsalis and Michael Torke. So, yeah, he's the real deal.

new chair

I bought a new office chair to tether myself to while I write and, frankly, it was about damn time. There was "some assembly required." In other words I had to do everything but sew the seat cushions together, cast the molds for the plastic pieces, weld the metal crap together, etc.













25 minutes later I came up with this. Here's my old chair (which was a donation...obviously) angrily trying to overthrow it's much superior, newer replacement. I would launch into an extended diatribe about how comfortable this chair is compared to my old one but this picture makes it so obvious I would be wasting finger effort to type it out. It's day and frickin' night. I love this thing and, combined with my other new toy, my writing space is SOOOO much better.














Max tries out a new place to perch.

it's almost done...thanks be to the gods

Iron Sharpens Iron has entered the final stages of the game (dynamics, score formatting, etc.) and none too soon. It will be unbelievably nice to get this one in the can. I'm certainly not complaining but, after staring at a computer screen for so long, it gets nice to think that you're almost done. I think that, after the fun part of coming up with the piece, it can seem like an awful lot of work to make it into something that other people can bring to life. This, of course, is a prelude to the even better part of hearing it performed so, in the end, it's probably worth it.

Here is a superfluous picture of a cat re-enacting what it's like for me after hours of work and cups of caffeine (and maybe the occasional mini-bag of pretzels).












In other news I can formally announce a residency with Sacramento's Vox Musica next April. The singers and conductor Daniel Paulson threw down a breathtaking performance of Three Nightsongs last season and I'm glad to be meeting them in person and doing a little pre-concert lecturing. This is an up-an-coming ensemble that's received some good reviews so I have the feeling it will be a blast. Add to that the fact that I've never been to Sacramento before and you have a possible combustible Edison.

I also found out today that, thanks to Daniel Hughes and The Choral Project, I finally cracked Amazon.com! Their CD, One Is the All is now available on Amazon along with a great clip of their performance of Musica animam tangens. Daniel is a great guy (we're collaborating long distance this winter on a performance of A Christmas Carol) and the choir is second-to-none.