Soprano Antionette Halloran: "I'd be lying in bed with buckets and towels, feeling so sick … But then I'd go on stage and feel great. The best time of that whole first trimester was the hours I spent on stage. The nausea just goes away.''
Read more....
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Farewell Emile Norman
On Thursday afternoon Emile Norman passed away. A long-time Carmel resident and patron of the arts, he was especially devoted to the Carmel Bach Festival. He and his purple sneakers will be sorely missed.
Read more in the Monterey Herald
2008 Slideshow of Emil's works, with his narration
Read more in the Monterey Herald
2008 Slideshow of Emil's works, with his narration
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Genetic Mystery of Music
Does a mother's lullaby give an infant a better chance for survival?�
Evidence suggests that humans did not invent music: It may predate us by tens of millions of years, and it may stimulate deep, primitive parts of the brain - the source, perhaps, of its deep, emotional pull. "Sound production has been part of animal repertoires forever and ever," says Jelle Atema, a flute-playing marine biologist who studies animal signaling at the Boston University Marine Program. "If that represents music for those animals, then we are the latecomers."�
An article from Discover Magazine
Evidence suggests that humans did not invent music: It may predate us by tens of millions of years, and it may stimulate deep, primitive parts of the brain - the source, perhaps, of its deep, emotional pull. "Sound production has been part of animal repertoires forever and ever," says Jelle Atema, a flute-playing marine biologist who studies animal signaling at the Boston University Marine Program. "If that represents music for those animals, then we are the latecomers."�
An article from Discover Magazine
Monday, September 21, 2009
Why Mozart didn't get tenure...
Anyone who has ever taught in the music department of a large university will see the irony and humor in this fake letter...
Read it here....
Read it here....
Saturday, September 19, 2009
New Transposition Service in NYC
Dana Haynes is a conductor, singer and music arranger.
His newest service is QuickTranspositions.com.
More information on the QT website
(Disclaimer: this blog and its contributors are not associated with Dana Haynes in any way. THis posting is intended as a friendly tip.)
His newest service is QuickTranspositions.com.
More information on the QT website
(Disclaimer: this blog and its contributors are not associated with Dana Haynes in any way. THis posting is intended as a friendly tip.)
Friday, September 18, 2009
How Arts Training Improves Attention and Cognition--From the Dana Foundation
If there were a surefire way to improve your brain, would you try it? Read this fascinating new article from the Dana Foundations's current online issue of Cerebrum.
Does education in the arts transfer to seemingly unrelated cognitive abilities? Researchers are finding evidence that it does. Michael Posner argues that when children find an art form that sustains their interest, the subsequent strengthening of their brains' attention networks can improve cognition more broadly.
Read more....
Does education in the arts transfer to seemingly unrelated cognitive abilities? Researchers are finding evidence that it does. Michael Posner argues that when children find an art form that sustains their interest, the subsequent strengthening of their brains' attention networks can improve cognition more broadly.
Read more....
Thursday, September 17, 2009
David's Free PDFs!
During this lull in the performing schedule, I've been collecting some of the handouts I have recently used at the Carmel Bach Festival and my own workshops.
I've created a new page on my site with links to all the pdf documents for reading or downloading.
There are several new documents recently completed: 1) the "Degrees of Separation" chart I posted last week, and 2) a four-page document called "Three Choral Masterpieces," about the Beethoven "Choral Fantasy" and Brahms' "Alto Rhapdody" and "Song of Destiny." This document includes my new English translations of all three works.
Here is the page on my site with links to the free pdfs.
Enjoy.
David Gordon
Dramaturge, Carmel Bach Festival
I've created a new page on my site with links to all the pdf documents for reading or downloading.
There are several new documents recently completed: 1) the "Degrees of Separation" chart I posted last week, and 2) a four-page document called "Three Choral Masterpieces," about the Beethoven "Choral Fantasy" and Brahms' "Alto Rhapdody" and "Song of Destiny." This document includes my new English translations of all three works.
Here is the page on my site with links to the free pdfs.
Enjoy.
David Gordon
Dramaturge, Carmel Bach Festival
Monday, September 14, 2009
Happy Birthday Joseph Haydn!
On this day in 1732, Franz Joseph Haydn was born in the little village of Rohrau, near Vienna.
Info about Haydn on the City of Vienna website.....
Info about Haydn on the City of Vienna website.....
Friday, September 11, 2009
Calendar of Events North of the Monterey Area
Not classical music exclusively, but a wonderful entertainment guide for people in the Gilroy/Morgan Hill/San Juan Bautista area. Published by Paul and Sylvia Myrvold.
Out & About Magazine is a resource guide, aimed at helping established residents and newcomers to the area get the most out of their time without spending too much time in their cars.
Articles in Out & About Magazine are written by local residents. All the columnists either work or participate in the activity they write about. Out & About Magazine does not do profiles of businesses or people, except for restaurant or theatre reviews.
Current columns running on a monthly basis include:
Film (Paul Myrvold), Running (Bill Flodberg), Walking Woman (Rosemary Rideout), Cycling (Curt Hentschke), Music (Alex Myrvold), Theatre (Paul Myrvold) and Pets (Friends of the San Martin Animal Shelter). They also have a monthly Kids Calendar, What’s Up at Gavilan College and Community Events Calendar as well as 2 or 3 special features and programs to events like the Home, Garden and Gourmet Show.
In the fall they publish their yearly Restaurant Guide which is distributed to the hotels and motels in the area throughout the entire year. March, April and May are the annual Camps feature and the Home, Garden and Gourmet Show is in May and September. They always have a big feature for the California Rodeo in Salinas and a guide to 4th of July activities. Columns in the Spring include articles on Elder Care and Careers.
Visit their website...
Out & About Magazine is a resource guide, aimed at helping established residents and newcomers to the area get the most out of their time without spending too much time in their cars.
Articles in Out & About Magazine are written by local residents. All the columnists either work or participate in the activity they write about. Out & About Magazine does not do profiles of businesses or people, except for restaurant or theatre reviews.
Current columns running on a monthly basis include:
Film (Paul Myrvold), Running (Bill Flodberg), Walking Woman (Rosemary Rideout), Cycling (Curt Hentschke), Music (Alex Myrvold), Theatre (Paul Myrvold) and Pets (Friends of the San Martin Animal Shelter). They also have a monthly Kids Calendar, What’s Up at Gavilan College and Community Events Calendar as well as 2 or 3 special features and programs to events like the Home, Garden and Gourmet Show.
In the fall they publish their yearly Restaurant Guide which is distributed to the hotels and motels in the area throughout the entire year. March, April and May are the annual Camps feature and the Home, Garden and Gourmet Show is in May and September. They always have a big feature for the California Rodeo in Salinas and a guide to 4th of July activities. Columns in the Spring include articles on Elder Care and Careers.
Visit their website...
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Great Musicians on Sound, Spirit, and Heart
Beautiful thoughts, collected by David Gordon
Music is truly love itself, the purest, most ethereal language of the emotions, embodying all their changing colors in every variety of shading and nuance.
- Carl Maria von Weber
The goods of this world are most dear to me, but much dearer are peace of mind and my own honor.
- Claudio Monteverdi
The marvels of God are not brought forth from one's self.
Rather, it is more like a chord, a sound that is played.
The tone does not come out of the chord itself,
but rather, through the touch of the musician.
I am, of course, the lyre and harp of God's kindness.
- Hildegard of Bingen
That which draws us by its mystical force; what every created thing, even the very stones, feels with absolute certainty as the center of its being... is the force of love. Christians call this "eternal blessedness." It is a necessity of man for growth and joy.
- Gustav Mahler
Our music, whose eternal being is forever bound up in its temporal sounds, is not merely an art, enriching beyond measure our cultural life, but also a message from higher worlds, raising and urging us on by its reminders of our own eternal origins.
- Bruno Walter
Music, being identical with Heaven, isn't a thing of momentary thrills, or even hourly ones: it's a condition of eternity.
- Gustav Holst
Healing happens between the notes. I had to allow the space and not be afraid, and to know that things happen in space. You have to let the space settle. If you let go, you transcend and experience the stillness, and that is the healing. One ingredient of health is rest. Activity comes from inactivity. The basis of sound is silence. Stillness is basic to health.
- Paul Horn
We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self - the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.
- Yehudi Menuhin
I shall go forth, against all sorts of things, towards bright, strong and righteous aims, towards a genuine art that loves mankind, lives with his joys, his grief and his sufferings.
- Modest Mussorgsky
We are one of the leaves of the tree. The tree is all of humanity. We cannot live without the other leaves of the tree. We need intelligence, and when there is intelligence, there is love.
- Pablo Casals
Music can be all things to all persons. It is like a great dynamic sun in the center of a solar system which sends out its rays and inspiration in every direction.... Music makes us feel that the heavens open and a divine voice calls. Something in our souls responds and understands.
- Leopold Stokowski
Almost unconsciously, the very old memory of a ringing of bells came to me when, in evening during my childhood, this sound wafted across from the west, from a village called Gadirac. Musing on this, I began to dream. But it would be difficult to describe this vagueness in words. Isn't it often that an exterior event fills us with these kinds of thoughts, so imprecise that in reality they are not thoughts but something in which we take pleasure. Perhaps the desire for things that do not exist. And that is really the domain of music.
- Gabriel Faure
Every second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and never will be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four and that Paris is the capital of France. We should say to each of them, "Do you know who you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been another child like you."
- Pablo Casals
It seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence - an excitable body which a sudden change can throw from the best into the worst state. Patience I must now choose for my guide, and I have done so. Divine One, thou lookest into my inmost soul, thou knowest it, thou knowest that love of man and desire to do good live therein.
- Beethoven
Music possesses much richer means of expression and it is a more subtle medium for translating the 1000 shifting moments of the feelings of the soul.
- Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
I believe in a passionately strong feeling for the poetry of life - for the beautiful, the mysterious, the romantic, the ecstatic - the loveliness of Nature, the lovability of people, everything that excites us, everything that starts our imagination working, LAUGHTER, gaiety, strength, heroism, love, tenderness, every time we see - however dimly - the godlike that is in everyone - and want to kneel in reverence.
- Leopold Stokowski
To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervor, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine: to reach the heart of every noble thought...
- Pablo Casals, speaking of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach
I stand face to face with the Eternal Energy from which all life flows, and I draw upon that infinite power. To contact this Eternal Energy, I must conform to certain laws, two of the most important being SOLITUDE and CONCENTRATION. A composer must sit in the silence and wait for the direction from a force that is superior to the intellect.
- Max Bruch
More collections like this on the SpiritSound website....
Music is truly love itself, the purest, most ethereal language of the emotions, embodying all their changing colors in every variety of shading and nuance.
- Carl Maria von Weber
The goods of this world are most dear to me, but much dearer are peace of mind and my own honor.
- Claudio Monteverdi
The marvels of God are not brought forth from one's self.
Rather, it is more like a chord, a sound that is played.
The tone does not come out of the chord itself,
but rather, through the touch of the musician.
I am, of course, the lyre and harp of God's kindness.
- Hildegard of Bingen
That which draws us by its mystical force; what every created thing, even the very stones, feels with absolute certainty as the center of its being... is the force of love. Christians call this "eternal blessedness." It is a necessity of man for growth and joy.
- Gustav Mahler
Our music, whose eternal being is forever bound up in its temporal sounds, is not merely an art, enriching beyond measure our cultural life, but also a message from higher worlds, raising and urging us on by its reminders of our own eternal origins.
- Bruno Walter
Music, being identical with Heaven, isn't a thing of momentary thrills, or even hourly ones: it's a condition of eternity.
- Gustav Holst
Healing happens between the notes. I had to allow the space and not be afraid, and to know that things happen in space. You have to let the space settle. If you let go, you transcend and experience the stillness, and that is the healing. One ingredient of health is rest. Activity comes from inactivity. The basis of sound is silence. Stillness is basic to health.
- Paul Horn
We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self - the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.
- Yehudi Menuhin
I shall go forth, against all sorts of things, towards bright, strong and righteous aims, towards a genuine art that loves mankind, lives with his joys, his grief and his sufferings.
- Modest Mussorgsky
We are one of the leaves of the tree. The tree is all of humanity. We cannot live without the other leaves of the tree. We need intelligence, and when there is intelligence, there is love.
- Pablo Casals
Music can be all things to all persons. It is like a great dynamic sun in the center of a solar system which sends out its rays and inspiration in every direction.... Music makes us feel that the heavens open and a divine voice calls. Something in our souls responds and understands.
- Leopold Stokowski
Almost unconsciously, the very old memory of a ringing of bells came to me when, in evening during my childhood, this sound wafted across from the west, from a village called Gadirac. Musing on this, I began to dream. But it would be difficult to describe this vagueness in words. Isn't it often that an exterior event fills us with these kinds of thoughts, so imprecise that in reality they are not thoughts but something in which we take pleasure. Perhaps the desire for things that do not exist. And that is really the domain of music.
- Gabriel Faure
Every second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and never will be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four and that Paris is the capital of France. We should say to each of them, "Do you know who you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been another child like you."
- Pablo Casals
It seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence - an excitable body which a sudden change can throw from the best into the worst state. Patience I must now choose for my guide, and I have done so. Divine One, thou lookest into my inmost soul, thou knowest it, thou knowest that love of man and desire to do good live therein.
- Beethoven
Music possesses much richer means of expression and it is a more subtle medium for translating the 1000 shifting moments of the feelings of the soul.
- Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
I believe in a passionately strong feeling for the poetry of life - for the beautiful, the mysterious, the romantic, the ecstatic - the loveliness of Nature, the lovability of people, everything that excites us, everything that starts our imagination working, LAUGHTER, gaiety, strength, heroism, love, tenderness, every time we see - however dimly - the godlike that is in everyone - and want to kneel in reverence.
- Leopold Stokowski
To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervor, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine: to reach the heart of every noble thought...
- Pablo Casals, speaking of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach
I stand face to face with the Eternal Energy from which all life flows, and I draw upon that infinite power. To contact this Eternal Energy, I must conform to certain laws, two of the most important being SOLITUDE and CONCENTRATION. A composer must sit in the silence and wait for the direction from a force that is superior to the intellect.
- Max Bruch
More collections like this on the SpiritSound website....
Monday, September 7, 2009
Health and Consequences: the unethical audience member
By RANDY COHEN
NY Times Magazine, Sunday Sept 6
"Making disruptive noises at a concert is certainly rude, but if you are sitting close enough to distract the performers, does it rise to unethical?"
Read more....
NY Times Magazine, Sunday Sept 6
"Making disruptive noises at a concert is certainly rude, but if you are sitting close enough to distract the performers, does it rise to unethical?"
Read more....
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Vocal Vibrato: teachable?
Q. Why do some people’s singing voices have more vibrato than others?
Q. Can it be taught?
Answers: 1. It happens, and 2. Yes.
Brief article from the NY Times
Read more....
Q. Can it be taught?
Answers: 1. It happens, and 2. Yes.
Brief article from the NY Times
Read more....
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