I can’t stop thinking about that damned cover. I don’t like it, but I don’t know exactly why. It’s confronta­tional, and it doesn’t partic­u­larly offend me, but the very first time I saw it my reaction was “Not OK.”

The cover was designed by Barbara deWilde, who has done some wonder­ful work for Nonesuch in the past. Her work often conveys meaning with a certain blunt­ness or liter­al­ness, which is one of the pleasing things about it. My favorite is her design for Michael Gordon’s Weather:

If you’ve ever talked to Steve, or heard him speak (much less listened to the man’s music), you may agree that he can be simi­larly direct, often to the point of blunt­ness. I don’t have any “inside infor­ma­tion” on how this cover came about, but I can imagine it appeal­ing to him. As in: let’s not just use a photo of the twin towers, let’s use one of the most visceral, gristly, in-your-face photos that exists—the one where the plane is an instant away from the second tower. 

Anyway, they’ve already given ⁹⁄₁₁ the dreamy-and-elegiac treat­ment, with this beau­ti­ful cover by John Gall:

Inter­est­ingly, while the WTC ⁹⁄₁₁ photo­graph may have incited contro­versy, the typog­ra­phy is utterly appro­pri­ate: the titles are set in Gotham, the same font used by the ⁹⁄₁₁ Memorial, the Freedom Tower’s corner­stone, and on and on ad infini­tum (includ­ing, umm, this here cover).

So, if you don’t want that photo in your iTunes library, but you enjoy Gotham, then here, I made some­thing for you: 

UPDATE, 7/29/11: Bob Hurwitz has a typi­cally eloquent response.

Quick gig alert. This Saturday (July 23) at 8, I’ll be playing with Ted Hearne’s band Delusion Story at the giant post-indus­trial commune at 33 Flatbush Avenue (other­wise known as Exapno). We’ll be playing some of your favorite TedMusic (includ­ing Is it Dirty) and maybe a couple of brand-new tunes as well. The band is Ted (vocals), Leah Coloff (cello & vocals), Taylor Levine (guitar), Nathan Koci (accor­dion & keys), Ron Wiltrout (drums), James Ilgen­fritz III (bass), and yours truly on keys. There are some really stellar perform­ers in there.

If you’re not dead of heat­stroke by then, be sure to stop by!

In an conflu­ence of things I watched Persona and The Talented Mr. Ripley back-to-back this week. I love it when things juxta­pose them­selves just so as to illu­mi­nate each other. Minghella must’ve had Bergman in mind during this “Doppel­gänger” shot on the train: 

Why do you do that thing with your neck?

Neither movie uses this Schubert song, though, which seems like a missed oppor­tu­nity (or maybe it would’ve been too obvious?) Take it away, Dietrich: 

Franz Schubert: Der Doppel­gänger

Leica Lenses (English) from Leica Camera on Vimeo.

I just eat this stuff up.

Here’s how we cele­brated the longest day of the year: with the NY première of Mauricio Kagel’s Eine Brise, for 111 cyclists.

OK, there aren’t exactly 111 of us, but I think the piece sounds pretty great anyway. The above video (courtesy of master video­g­ra­pher Adrian Knight) actually shows two perfor­mances: one going each way up and down Cornelia St., which was closed off for the occasion. 

I got to be the leader. One of the proudest perfor­mances of my life. 

And on a related note, here’s a nice little article on NYC cyclists from the Wall Street Journal, of all places.

Yester­day was the Bang on a Can marathon, which is a type of marathon for non-athletic people. I got to play At the River, at a river, for the second time this month. The marathon is the kind of thing that feels, to me, as though it had always existed, and will always continue to exist—I am happy to have been a small part of this continuum.

But that’s not the only marathon happen­ing around now—there’s one in Atlanta, Georgia called Sonic­Palooza on June 25^th, with 10 hours of your favorite (mostly mini­mally-inclined) music, includ­ing my own Crashing Through Fences. 2 PM until midnight at the Woodruff Arts Center. All my Georgian cohort, be there.

Syphon, Intel­li­gentsia from Depart­ment of the 4^th Dimen­sion on Vimeo.

I’ve been making siphon coffee for about a year (I use a stovetop pot) but I’ve never been as clinical about it as the guy in this video. I am so excited to now have a morning-time use for my meat thermometer.

Here’s an idea I had while I was learning some new pieces for my Barge­mu­sic show last week. Perhaps perform­ers, not composers, were at the root of all the complex­ity in new music, espe­cially 20^th-century music. A kind of “perfor­mance anxiety”, but not in the usual sense of the term. 

When a performer learns a newly-composed piece of music, he asks himself at a certain point: is this piece any good? Is it worth the time and effort I’m putting into it? If the question persists, it makes it pretty tough to do your job. 

But if the music is so dense and complex that even the performer can’t under­stand it, that pretty much solves the problem. Is the piece good or bad? Who cares, because it’s completely unas­sail­able! The performer’s job is reduced from cultural gate­keeper to manual laborer. Invest­ing so much in learning a piece of complex music is kind of like buying an expen­sive, unre­li­able European sports car: you have to justify it to yourself somehow, or you’ll go crazy. 

The end result is decreased risk for the performer of contem­po­rary music. That impen­e­tra­ble wall of perceived quality is trans­ferred to them. Maybe perform­ers actually put them­selves at greater risk by choosing to play music that’s more outwardly grasp-able or emotion­ally acces­si­ble. And what good are you if you don’t take risks?

Here is a lovely video that shows why biking in midtown Manhat­tan is so much fun: 

3‑Way Street from roncon­co­ca­cola on Vimeo.

The reason I like this video so much is that it shows that no one group of people is at fault for traffic problems. Very often you’ll read coverage from, say, the perspec­tive of cyclists laying all blame on cars; the car people decry lawless cyclists. No one ever seems to blame pedes­tri­ans. Just watch this video, though, and you’ll see terrible behavior from all involved parties. 

(Also, just FYI, none of the idiot bikers in the video is me.)