I was reading in Jonathan Cott’s Conver­sa­tions with Glenn Gould on the subway the other day, and was intrigued by Gould’s descrip­tion of a studio tech­nique devised for his record­ing of Scri­abin’s 5^th sonata. The opening of the piece is a long trill from the bottom to the top of the keyboard, pianis­simo to fortis­simo, during which the engi­neers adjusted the source from far to near. Esen­tially, they created an audio “zoom lens”, using four ranks of mics placed at inter­vals starting from the furthest edge of the room on up to the inside of the treble register of the piano.

Using the studio as an artistic tool is old news, but not for clas­si­cal produc­tion, and certainly not for a solo piano record­ing. I had no idea Gould’s record­ings were manip­u­lated to this extent&#8212 but it makes me want to try a “mic zoom” myself. Too bad I only own two mics.

Anyway, here is the afor­men­tioned passage. The effect is pretty subtle but totally gripping:

A moment of silence for the passing of The Rest is Noise

Reading Alex’s blog was my intro­duc­tion to thinking about and discussing music as a vital, current thing. This personal essay from 2004 (when I was a freshman in college), while not a work of bloggage, encap­su­lates many of the reasons to be thankful there is an Alex Ross. Even now, re-reading that article feels like having a friend pat me on the back and say “Every­thing’s going to turn out OK”. Also, critical facil­i­ties aside, the guy is one hell of a prose stylist. I’m looking forward to follow­ing his new, offi­cially-sanc­tioned Unquiet Thoughts.

Brief concert plug: I saw the dress rehearsal for the new Bryan Senti/MacArthur Dance Project Ballet at Brooklyn Lyceum last night. There are two more perfor­mances; go. It is ambi­tious and senso­rily delightful.

Image courtesy of The Big Picture.

Here’s another cover I did last weekend:

Fig. 1: The Katama. Photo courtesy of Flickr user jmknapp.

I met Lucinda Childs today! The Joyce Theater screened a great docu­men­tary about her, after which she appeared in the flesh for Das Oblig­atie Q und A. There was a brief segment in the film on a dance called Katema, which reminded me of a ferry called Katama my family used to ride to Martha’s Vineyard when I was a little boy. Unlike the double-ended Islander (yes, I was a bit of a ferry connois­seur), the Katama is single-ended, so every time it ports it has to do a little flip turn. And, fancy that, Katema was exactly that: a sort of brisk walking back-and-forth dance, inter­rupted by little turns at each change of direc­tion. Childs actually lives on the Vineyard, so I asked her if it was a refer­ence; she said “No” and reminded me of the spelling differ­ence, and then got in her limo. No matter.

Also, a new show added to the calendar, coming up in two short weeks: The NOW Ensemble visits Balti­more, MD, with The Night Jaunt in tow. I’m espe­cially excited to hear Steve Gorbos’s new piece, Signals.

For the past several weeks and into the somewhat inde­ter­mi­nate future I have been cohab­it­ing with a Bösendor­fer. This living arrange­ment has been going smoothly and I have been racking my brains trying to figure out how to prolong it. In the meantime, I’ve been making some “home record­ings” and having fun juicing them up in Logic. Here is a cover I did of one of my favorite Brian Eno songs, Every­thing Merges with the Night:

Every­thing Merges with the Night

One unique thing about Bösendor­fers is that they are single-strung, rather than loop strung (like Stein­ways et al.) meaning that when you break a string you don’t lose an entire note. It’s true, I just checked! Appar­ently they also hold tune better. Thanks, Bösendor­fer web site.