Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Concert Lineup for fall 2010!


I know that most of my friends that occasionally read this are not Bostonian in nature, but I'm posting my confirmed and possible concerts for the fall, since I'm planning ahead, and would like people to go with me to shows!  So here's what's coming to Boston in the early fall of 2010:

(Rochester 8/28-My Morning Jacket is coming, and I haven't decided whether or not I'm interested in going.  Food for thought.  Also, Lady Gaga is already booked to come to Boston in March of 2011.  That's so far in the future, I can't handle it, just like her futuristic clothing?)

9/7-Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Telekinesis.  Two underappreciated indie bands, and Telekinesis had that awesome song last year and a decent album.  Even though it's a Tuesday, could be worth investigating?
9/11-School of Seven Bells: I really like their new album. They have a nice female voice texture.
9/11-Jamie Lidell.  Soulful white people singing.  Love it.  And he's British?
9/12-Vampire Weekend, with Beach House opening, at the Bank of America pavilion on the waterfront.  *I'm definitely going to this.  I've purchased two tickets.
9/13-Dirty Projectors with Owen Pallett (aka. final fantasy) opening.  *Definitely going.  Tickets purchased, even though it will be back to back tunes.

9/16: Janelle Morae with Of Montreal.  That's a hot duo-there will be glitter, spandex, and lots of eyeliner and dancing.  I saw Of Montreal three years ago, and it was terrific, and Morae has got some serious style.  She makes me want to go to a vintage store immediately and embrace androgyny.  Who knew women could look so awesome in tuxes???

9/17: Broken Social Scene and The Sea and Cake.  BSS dropped a really solid album this year "Forgiveness Rock Record" which has turned out to be a surprise success.  
9/18: Pavement-ultimate 90's alternative band, making a comeback tour.  and Cake! on the same night, just not together.  I will probably be out of town for this, as I accidentally bought tickets to see Vampire Weekend at Radio City Music Hall for 9/17...
9/22: Field Music. I don't know them super well-I've heard a few tracks, and they just dropped a new album, but it's cheap and could be worth investigating.
9/23: Stars. This Montreal based pop group tends to have overly dramatic ballads, a la "Your ex-boyfriend is dead" from the O.C.  I'm kind of over them, but many people are turned to silly putty with their swirling harmonies.  I definitely listened to this song a gazillion times when I bought this album.

9/25: Teenage Fanclub.  Nick Hornby's favorite softy British band has some lovely songs.  They're super  under the radar, but quite nice actually.
9/30: Menomena.  I used to be into them, but I haven't listened to them lately.
10/1: Young at Heart Chorus.  This is the group that was featured in a documentary a few years ago-old folks singing hip contemporary tunes, a la Glee for old folks!
10/1: Ra Ra Riot-upstate New York's stringey band is one of my personal fav's, and they have a new album coming out stat.  I loved the first album, since I'm a sucker for a little ballad action sometimes.

10/5: Ratatat. We all remember Kid Cudi's collab with Ratatat and MGMT, right? "Pursuit of Happyness" is a tight song. Just checking
10/7: Cotton Jones featuring Pepper Rabbit.  I only know Pepper Rabbit-but Cotton Jones has a sort of soulful thing going on. (The opening to this Pepper Rabbit reminds me of the opening of an Elliottt Smith song.)
10/10-The Octopus Project.  Once again, curious, but not necessarily committed.
10/13-Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.  I'm curious, but not necessarily going. They have a fabulously depressing collection of music videos.
10/29-Frightened Rabbit and Plants and Animals.  I really liked the first Plants and Animals album.
11/1-Blonde Redhead.  I went through a dark depressing time where I listened to a lot of Blonde Redhead.


And last, but not least,
11/19-Boys II Men.  Ok, I'm not going, nor am I planning to.  I just thought it was excellent, and it made me want to slow dance at a middle school dance.

That's the preliminary concert calendar for popular music-more posted as I decide what to go to.

In other news, I'm embarrassed to say that I've been watching Glee, and that it sometimes makes me cry because it's so sappy.  


Romantic Violin Showpieces Reduce My Life Expectancy

Did you know that any excess of romantic violin showpieces reduces life expectancy and hearing longevity by years?  The damage can occur within minutes-guard yourself against an excess of Wieniawski, Paganini, and Kreisler, or you too may become lackadaisical or even worse, deaf to the point of only hearing harmonic double stops and coloratura runs executed with mechanical precision.  This is a cause that few align themselves with, but a serious disease nonetheless.  Raise awareness within your community, and promote substantial nutritionally fortified music over refined artificially sweetened melodies, or lack thereof.


More importantly, I am hurt that violinists and occasionally pianists have more music than anyone else, yet they choose to play obscure fluffernutter from the Romantic era.  How have we decided that we should all play everything Romantically?  What a dumb idea.  I feel like our responsibility, as trained musicians, is learning about all the different styles of the different periods.  That doesn't have to mean (but may) that you play Beethoven on a pianoforte, or that you whip out the heckelphone every now and again for some obscure Hindemith.  But more seriously, it's about the style, the time, and how you can reproduce that sound now, whether on a modern or traditional instrument.  It's not just violins-it's excerpts, it's this convoluted idea of "modern performance practice" that's been the standard since the overdramatic 40's and 50's in which wobbly vibrato and Romanticism made everyone swoon.  Well I'm not swooning anymore, boys and girls, and it's time to play Mozart correctly.  A bit light, less vibrato, more resonance, and sure as hell not martele.  Beethoven 5 is not synonymous with violence, so let's try to avoid that in the fortissimos, ok?  Debussy and Ravel-more air, sweep, more bow.  Some might say I'm a snob.  I'm a stylistic purist.  We live in a time where knowledge is abundant.  Why not use that?  When I hear a really great performance, in which someone plays the Ravel sonata differently from their Bach and their Lutoslawski, I'm pretty excited.  To play everything the same is boring, and I don't think it's interesting for anyone.  If only we could get that sort of viewpoint about excerpts and auditions, we'd all be a bit happier.  But at least for today, I'd be a bit happier if I could hear less Romantic showpieces, more substance, and less slurpee music-sickly sweet, and only good for the first swig.


listening to: Takemitsu "A string around autumn"

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Aargh!

I just wrote this really nice blog post for the last thirty minutes, and it wasn't saved because of my dodgy internet here.  But suffice it to say, I'll recollect my thoughts in the next few days.  Nonetheless, I had a good recital yesterday, I bought some yellow converse on super sale, and met my great aunt today.  I also appreciate that looking up "smelly feet" is pornography (my festival is at a Christian college, so I take delight in trying to outsmart the internet censorship thing.  Most things, including comic books, are censored.  I didn't know smelly feet fit the bill, but that's ok.)

listening to: Grizzly Bear and Vampire Weekend.  My mom thinks Grizzly Bear is legit because Michael McDonald covered one of their tracks, "While You Wait for the Others" and she likes that Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig sounds like Paul Simon.  So we listened to them all the way to Santa Barbara today.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Ending on a sweet and sour note

The last week of Banff ended in a bittersweet manner.  By week three, the novelty of room service and posh food wears off, and people become grumpy and dissatisfied, or at least, the people I was with were.  In a way, it was somewhat funny-I came back to Banff because I had wanted to study with Roger (when I decided to come to Banff, I hadn't decided whether or not to go back to NEC, so I wasn't sure if I'd ever study with him again.) and I had wanted to work with John Adams.  Both of those events occurred within the first week, so in a way, the rest of the program was a bit of a letdown.  By the time Roger left, we began to see the political manuevers that had taken place, favoring one person in the viola class, and giving him three "special" assignments.  We also all realized that Barry is kinda crazy, and that most of the remaining concerts favored people that had a political connection to him, which is rather unfortunate.  In essence, the basic unfairness of the final assignments really affected the group as a whole, especially those who were less familiar with the political workings of Banff.  The more specific part of the story is that Barry basically picked one person (who was no better in skillset than the rest of us) and put him in a special masterclass, the faculty/student chamber group, and an extra chamber group of the Britten Phantasy Quartet.  The catch in all this is that 6 violists were doing nothing all week-they had no assignments, were in no ensembles, and thus this was totally unfair.  The choices were made in an unfair manner, and really pissed off most of my friends, because this one violist went to McGill (and that group was already a pain in the ass to deal with) and was going to Glenn Gould, and knew Barry.  This person should definitely have had one of the three above opportunities, but to give him everything was unfair to the people who already knew the Britten, or who were really into Baroque performance practice (me!) since he played for Sigiswald Kuijken.  I guess the question we have to pose is, when situations present themselves that are very political, how can we keep motivated in our own self worth?
     For many of my friends, they just stopped caring and starting being pissed off most of the time.  I was definitely upset by the outcome, because it just wasn't fair to the group, and also didn't represent the skills of the whole 10 of us by any means.  I wrote a very blatant evaluation saying that it was outrageous and that I wouldn't be returning next year. (True statement).  But more importantly, I wrote that it was detrimental to the group dynamic, because it affected the way we all got along, and made us feel less worthy in the eyes of the festival.  We already had a challenging time getting along with this one person, since the McGill clique was very exclusive, and not particular social with the rest of the camp, and that only made it worse.  The truth is that there are political situations in most festivals, schools, and even jobs.  I've certainly encountered unpleasant political situations at Eastman, which pleasantly prepared me for this, but many of peers were shocked and upset by the whole thing.  The only thing you can do, in the end, is to believe in yourself, and give freely of your music and your love.  Only then can you truly succeed.  If you're in music to be competitive, and to beat other people, I don't know that you'll ever be happy.  There are few "fair" ways of evaluating performers, and few ways to truly decide who is the best.  Knowing that our art is objective by nature, we must be prepared for occasional injustices, while also knowing that we too may be favored by such a failed system of adjudication and evaluation.  I'm sure that many talented people don't get into NEC every year, and because I had connections, I was guaranteed a returning spot.  Maybe someone else was negatively affected by my advantages, and I have to know that everything is equal in the end.  One negative consequence may lead to a great success later down the line, and vice versa.  Perceived failures can also make us work harder, and rekindle our desire to express the music within us, rather than focus on ourselves and our achievements.  That's at least what I hope.

Listening to: Radiohead!  it's been a while.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Amazing

I have so many things that I want to write about, now that I have functional internet, but for the time being, let me say that I am no longer in Banff anymore, and that it was a balmy 95 degrees when I stepped off the plane into Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon.  (After having gone to bed for an hour and a half, waking up, and having it be 45 degrees).  It was a pretty trippy Saturday, especially without the sleep, and since Friday night was pretty insane, just since people become so nice when it's the last day of a festival, and in the spirit of Banff, everyone had some lovely beers.  Many lovely beers.  I was also especially proud of myself for finally gathering the courage to talk to this person, whom I knew had just started their masters at NEC, and whom I had tried to talk to the whole time I was there, but since he was part of the McGill clique, I never succeeded.  I finally achieved a basic conversation win, by 2 AM, once everyone had had at least 2-3 drinks, and he was nice, even though he had sort of been a jerk for the whole festival.  It was pretty silly, actually, since he is living with one of my friends next year.  Silliness.  Anyway, more on Banff and the closure of the festival, but let's focus on the most current events.
     I went to see the bands She & Him, the Bird and the Bee, and the Swell Season last night, at the Hollywood Bowl, and it was awesome.  All three groups are boy-girl pairs, with backup musicians, and the female representation was Fierce.  (Here's the newest She/Him music video.)  It turns out that Zooey Deschanel can really sing!  She can truly belt it, and that was so awesome to witness.  Inara George of the Bird and the Bee was also good, if a little subdued, but I absolutely adore her covers of Hall and Oates songs.  The Swell Season was solid (They're the couple from the Movie "Once") if not a bit male dominated, in terms of presence, song writing, and vocal harmonies.  Glen Hansard took most of the lead vocals, and did most of the talking, although he has a wonderful voice and a very charismatic presence.  I just wish that Marketa would've been a bit more active, it was almost like she was watching him and observing his performance as much as we were.  But it was lovely to see women in music in such a powerful and significant role in each group.

 I've arrived in my new festival, The Montecito festival, in Santa Barbara, and let me tell you, it is no Banff.  No room service, no fancy food, no nightly bar trips.  But maybe that's for the best.  On that note, let me leave you with this video from Broken Social Scene-political, but a great song from their newest album.



listening to: She & Him

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Holy shit!

Whoah!  Vampire Weekend gets sued?

Sunday, July 11, 2010

A wild and crazy evening of existential proportions

So on Friday, I went to bed at 8 AM.  Let me correct that, and say that I went to bed on Saturday at 8 AM, rather than Friday night.  Why?  Well, I'm not entirely sure, exactly, but it ended up being a fascinating night of discussion, and me acting as the mom in my group of friends, and keeping them from doing things epically stupid.  (Although dumb things did happen.)  Let me retell the evening's events:
10-12 PM: Did a small recording for some Weezer project involving Rivers Cuomo's bedroom recordings from the early 90's, which then are being accompanied by overly dramatic strings.  It was a pretty silly project, and we were only recording snippets of music, and the songs weren't necessarily all that great, but I did it just so I could say that I did it.  I also requested that my name be listed in the booklet as Kayleigh "kmizzle" Miller, viola, so if that ends up happening, it will totally be worth it, as we weren't paid in beer or money.
12:30-2:30: went to the bar on campus, and had a few pitchers with the violas.  I probably had three glasses of beer, and I decided I was done, but the rest of my entourage kept going for it, which meant that they got pretty loopy, and I very quickly established that my new roll was as mother, to make sure that no one regretted the evening.  We witnessed a tragically drunk person fall flat on his back in the bar, and a crew of the sound engineering folks picked him up and took care of him.
2:30-3:30: Had a discussion, in a circle on the floor, about the convergence of good and evil, and what that could mean.  Basically, my friend Brian has been reading this Philip K. Dick sci-fi novel in which good and evil and intertwined within the same force/being, which is only revealed in the end of the story, and he was still reeling with the information.  This gets expanded upon later in the morning, but for now, everyone talks about their religious beliefs, and whether evil is a separate force, and whether Christianity allows such crazy talk.  Our numbers began to decline, as people got drunker and needed to remedy themselves in the water closet, so by 3:30, it was just me and my violist friend (and Bostonian) Brian.  So we got to talking to all those unnecessarily deep things like:
What is perception?  What is reality?  What is knowable, if anything?  Is there a good force in the world, and if not, then what keeps us alive, and happy?  It ended up being an hour and a half conversation that went in circles and didn't necessarily accomplish anything (the consequence of philosophy study) but it was fascinating to realize that in the end, we only know what we think, and everything else is based on our situational perception.  As in colorblindness, hearing loss, or any other sensory distortion, what traditional society defines as "normal" is anything but.  Yet, experience and memory are entirely based in our perceptions and misperceptions of situations, so in essence, there is no absolute truth, or action in any given situation.  This sort of dialogue could go on for days, but let's just stop there and say that reality is complicated.  By 5, we decided we might as well stay up for sunrise, which was around 5:40, and was slightly less than dramatic, but was tender unfolding of darkness into a mystical blue glow into light.  It made us think of one of the kindertotenlieder songs in which the author says that his child, his light has gone out in the night, and if not for the sun's rise, he could not survive the night's clasp.
6-7: In a fit of stupidity (told you it would happen) my friend kicked his flip flop over the railing of the 6th floor balcony, and onto the 5th floor balcony, which are rooms that belong to individual residents.  Now, at 6 in the morning, you can't exactly just wake someone up and say "Hey, I'm an epic idiot.  Can I go on your balcony?" Brian (and I) proceeded to make a variety of fishing pole style devices which were created to knock the shoe off of the porch.  We found a length of rope, and few planks, and proceeded to fool around with this for an hour, until the shoe landed on the concrete in front of the building.  Meanwhile, we saw faculty go for morning runs, elk, people photographing the elk, people photographing the elk look strangely at us, and a few maintenance people gave us a look of disapproval and curiosity.  In the end, Brian succeeded, and I fell asleep in the corner near the heater.  By the time we got the shoe, it was almost breakfast time, and we decided to make it until 7:30, when we would enjoy an warm and delicious hot breakfast, which was indeed one of the tastiest meals I'd had in a while.  There were poached eggs, sauteed mushrooms, hashbrowns, and mediocre croissants, but overall, it was the perfect ending to a very long evening contemplating existence and corporeal beings.

listening to: radiohead

words of the week: Sartorial and Corporeal, both which were used in a masterclass.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Aargh, and why gym yoga sucks

Today started off so well.  It really did.  But it got rather unpleasant by the end of the day.  Here's why: I went to a gym yoga class, because it was free, and it was pretty awful.  Terrible sequencing, way too many beginners, bad instructional cues, no anatomical sense in the sequencing, etc.  Example: started in child pose, then down dog, vinyasa, and crow? All within the first 4 minutes of class?  I almost started laughing, because it was fucking ridiculous.  It was also a lot of people who had no idea what they were doing, and I was in pain watching their form, since many of them were ignorantly cruising for a bruising.  So that was pretty upsetting.  It sort of did the trick for what I was going for-I just didn't do the stupid things, and didn't do too many vinyasas, but it was also upsetting.  The other thing I found out today was that my friend, who was watching my car, (but hopefully not driving it much?) took a friend to the emergency room, and then got sideswiped in the parking lot.  (But of course, not while he was in the car, so now there's a huge scrape on my bumper, no police report, which means I can't easily claim it, and I'm not even in the country.)  That's been majorly stressing me out, since I hadn't wanted him to be driving my car much anyways, and for this to have happened so soon after I left is really upsetting.  I know it's not his fault, and I shouldn't be mad at him, but I had given him the key to my car in the hopes that he would move it every now and again, not get it hurt.  Now, a trip to the emergency room is totally justified, but what kind of major bad luck is that?  It's pretty ridiculous.  I'm not sure what to do about it, and I hope he's willing to pay for some of the damage.  Without a police report and more extensive documentation (like proof that the other car hit me) I can't get reimbursed, which he of course didn't realize.  It's just stressful to not be able to do anything about it, and to not be able to do anything about for a month and a half at least.  The damage isn't structural, so the car is still safe to drive, but it looks really bad, and that's upsetting to me.  Either way, I don't know what to do, and I've been emailing people for advice, since my parents would flip if they found out.  I need to fix it before they visit me again, and that's that.

On a more positive side, I'm playing Theofanidis in a recital on Friday, and I'm excited about that.  I also climbed a mountain, and had  a ground squirrel eat from my lap, and sit on my knee.  So cute, it was disgusting.  My friend took some good pix, so hopefully those will follow!

listening to: The passion pit cover of "Tonight, Tonight" by the Smashing Pumpkins