We’re having an ice storm in the Center of the Universe this morning.  Good day to be old and vested although it’s not really the thrill you think it’s going to be.  Especially the old part. The last time Master Salvage and I took a meeting in the S21 Starbucks HQ the subject of guilty pleasures came up.  You know what I mean, Steve and Eydie, Karen Carpenter, Alvin and the Chipmunks.  But, applied to non-pop music.  David confessed that there were parts of certain Michael Nyman pieces that sound pretty darn good.  I owned up to an affection for Hovhaness.  Now, it’s your turn. 

The Tablet PC-wielding piano-playing super-awesome Hugh Sung is celebrating one year as a blogger. He has a podcast here introducing his cool gear to musicians. Get with the program, folks, and give Hugh a click. Busy here chasing pentatonic collections in Debussy.  I think there goes one right now…   

Times have been good for my old composition teacher Lee Hyla. After many years on the composition faculty at Boston’s New England Conservatory, he has been hired into an endowed chair at Northwestern University, where he will take up residence in the coming academic year. His impending departure has precipitated a flurry of activity in Boston, including a lengthy and glowing profile in the Boston Globe in mid January and a farewell retrospective concert at New England Conservatory a few days ago. And in November, John Zorn’s Tzadik label released his latest CD “Wilson’s Ivory-bill.” Samples of three of the

Found on the Web: ” … I think the thing about classical music being a class-signifier is more to do with the fact that our society has lost the notion that there are great works of culture that people should … might be excited to discover and there’s a common pool of artistic excitement that in a democracy you should offer to everyone. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t broaden the repertoire, but essentially if you live in a western democracy you have a certain historical — well, things have got to where they are now because of the culture, and

Composer Ann Millikan sent us a note yesterday.  Please let it be known: The great Quapaw-Cherokee composer Louis Ballard passed just around midnight at his home in Santa Fe, NM.  He was 75.  He was a dear man, and will be missed.  

Nice burble of activity going on here. Way to keep the fires burning, people. Robert Zimmerman’s learning how to take the heat over in the Composers Forum. Click on comments: some heavyweights are weighing in. A charming post from Jeffrey Biegel, who’s performing Lowell Liebermann in Germany. I wonder what all the Kool Kats in Deutschland think about our Lowell. Anthony Cornicello digs the five-octave marimba; Naxos’s hawking some Virgil Thomson; Jay Batzner’s uncovered a copy of the long suppressed video of Einstein on the Beach. Huzzah! Makes me long for a Lego Lohengrin. (Paging Robert Wilson!) And just below

A YouTube video of Reich’s seminal Clapping Music accomplished via juggling (Thanks to MySpace friend James Combs for pointing me to it). Imagine what they could do with 4’33” orDrumming?

Sometimes you don’t need to travel far to be where the hot stuff’s happening. We’ve got fresh action on a lot of fronts here at the ole dump. First stop: Composers Forum. Robert Zimmerman, a new voice here whose presence advances our already unstoppable progress through Dixie, finds the whole “I’ll be understood after I’m dead”-thing a bit ridiculous. But he knows a few famous folks these days who don’t. I think I’m going to go leave a comment . . . Back now. Moving on. Next: Lawrence Dillon has a reflection or two on Ned Rorem’s Our Town. And