I just got back from a screening of a couple of Leonard Bernstein’s films in the Purcell Room. As part of the season-long Bernstein festival (which the CCO is playing in), the Southbank Centre is showing films Bernstein made for the American Omnibus TV series in the 1950s. Apparently this is the first time they
Category: Music
Musical Tree
The other day I was thinking about music teachers and the idea occurred to me that you could trace your musical history like you could your family history. If you were to follow your teachers’ teachers back through time you would end up with something like a family tree, except it would be a musical
Stravinsky on conductors
It is said that one morning in London he was with a friend in a taxi when, just as they came to Ludgate Hill, the bells of St. Paul’s began to ring. He leaned forward to listen and tapped on the window for the driver to stop. Then he turned to his friend and said:
Austral Sinfonietta Summer Concert 2009
Those of you who read my other blog will have noticed a total lack of new posts recently. This is only partly because of the four week break in Grands Prix. It is mostly because all my spare time is taken up with getting ready for another Austral Sinfonietta concert in September. We will be
San Francisco Symphony
After a very long week I could do little more than lay around in Huntington Park on Nob Hill today but tonight I caught the F Train to Davies Symphony Hall to see Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in an all Brahms concert. Lief Ove Andsnes played the Second Piano Concerto
Seeqpod
Seeqpod is cool. Basically, it’s a music search engine and flash-based player. Apparently they don’t believe there are any copyright issues as they don’t host the tracks themselves but just link to them. It works really well. For example, I really like the music on this cool Sprint ad, so I loaded up seeqpod and
Another Austral concert
I’ve decided to put on another Austral Sinfonietta concert. A break of nearly five years must be long enough to dull the memory of the stress and expense these things cause. The concert is on September 6 and I’m at that scary stage where things have been booked, money has been paid but I’m still
Bleep
I decided to treat myself for going to the dentist today, so I bought some music from Bleep. This is a really great and unique music download site with lots of interesting music that is totally DRM free. That’s right, according to their FAQ: “We believe that most people like to be treated as customers
CCO 10th anniversary
It was the Corinthian Chamber Orchestra’s 10th anniversary concert on Saturday night. It was a great concert with a full audience. The programme was: Mozart: Magic Flute Overture Elgar: Cello Concerto Beethoven: Symphony No 5 Richard Jenkinson performed the Elgar and we played the overture from Marriage of Figaro as an encore The concert was
The second Austral concert
What are we doing? Well, the recent past has been mostly taken up with organising the second Austral Sinfonietta concert. Held at the same venue, it was, by all accounts, an improvement on the first one last year. The orchestra played extremely well (after a scarily small number of rehearsals) and the audience was at