The Standing Room

Links for 2009-06-25 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-26T00:00:00-07:00

The N-Judah Chronicles: 1 Adam 12, 1 Adam 12, We Have a MUNI Fail Whale In Progress!
@thestandingroom gets shout-out in NJC!
Does A Private Company Own Your Muni Arrival Times?: News: SFAppeal
"When Steven Peterson created Routesy, an iPhone app that lets riders see Muni arrival times, the last thing he expected was to hear was that Muni's real-time arrival times were actually the property of a private company located in the East Bay." so ridiculous

Links for 2009-06-23 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-24T00:00:00-07:00

Rose’s Turn: Patti LuPone Responds to ArtsBeat - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com
"Do we tolerate rudeness by members of the audience who feel they have the right to sit in a dark theater, texting or checking their e-mail while the light from their screens distract both performers and the audience alike? Or, should I stand up for my rights as a performer as well as the audiences I perform for?"
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: The New York Times is friggin pathetic
"I will tell you this about iLiver 2.0: It's nanoengineered, and it kicks ass."
Graphical Overview of Same Sex Marriage Debate, v. 1.3
Arguments transcribed from various Facebook polls: "What's 'non sequitur' mean? Do I look it up in a Fag-to-English dictionary?" *sigh* (via joe.my.god)
The Stage / News / Evening Standard arts columnist Norman Lebrecht to leave paper
"Lebrecht, arts columnist and former assistant editor of the Evening Standard, has announced he is to leave the recently rebranded newspaper this week"

13 Ways of Looking at a Music Festival: Ojai 2009, Part I: Friday

2009-06-23T01:29:50-07:00

I must agree with the old fogeys that tweeting during performances is completely unacceptable. However, I thought I'd try tweeting in between performances during my recent trip to the 63rd Ojai Music Festival, a West Coast new music mainstay. Herewith, an annotated compilation of tweets from the weekend, or, if you prefer, a Twit's View of Ojai.

thestandingroom is driving down to Ojai. http://bit.ly/RBdc8 #fb 9:35 AM Jun 12th from TweetDeck

I picked up my car from Enterprise Friday morning. @linernotesdanny later said, "you DROVE, are you INSANE?", but really, I'm not sure there was any better option. I explored taking the train, but this NY Times article, coincidentally published on the same weekend, explains why that would have been folly. And Ojai is an inland community, nestled among mountains, an hour up a winding road from Santa Barbara. So I loaded up the iPod with plenty of driving music, geared up for the long ride and set out on my solo road trip down 101.

Twenty minutes out of SF, the stereo stopped working.

thestandingroom is sure there are other nonwhite folks around. #fb 8:03 PM Jun 12th from Tweetie

I pulled into this small town, full of horses and spas, and walked over to the Libbey Bowl, an outdoor shell where most of the concerts were to take place. For various reasons I've never been free on this weekend in June, so this was my first experience in Ojai. And my initial, honest, immediate reaction was, well, that the Ojai Music Festival might well deserve slot #127 on the list of Stuff White People Like. Now, this is not meant to trigger a round of hand-wringing about diversity or a bout of white guilt or anything; I'm merely observing that normally the only other times I'm so aware of my own non-whiteness, living in California, is when I get hired to sing in churches where people say things like, "It is meet and right so to do." (It didn't help matters when I was the only person in my vicinity asked, by an usher, to confirm that I wasn't a plebeian interloper from the lawn, trying to snag an unclaimed seat.)

Official Ojai Festival photo

thestandingroom Tin Hat just finished a set where every piece led some women to say "mmmmm..." quietly to themselves in the silence before the applause. 8:42 PM Jun 12th from Tweetie

So with that I settled into 48 hours of concert-going, during which I heard seven and a half exceptional concerts. There's an unmistakeable romantic charm about hearing music outdoors in the dark, amid the sounds of nighttime insects and wind blowing through leaves, and Tin Hat, the 4-member composer/improvisor collective, were well suited to the environment with their quiet, Satie-inspired music, created from an assemblage of instruments ranging from violin and guitar to harmonium and the dark-hued contra alto clarinet.

Official Ojai Festival photo

thestandingroom sat through an entire performance with contacts reversed left/right. Luckily it was a theater piece about images that are out of focus. #fb 10:40 PM Jun 12th from Tweetie

The concert closed with eighth blackbird (the music directors of this year's festival), Rinde Eckert, and Steven Mackey performing the world premiere of Slide, a multimedia staged work structured around a narrative about a psychologist doing a test about human perception: if we look at an image out of focus and are asked to make a decision about what it is, how long after it comes into focus does it take us to recognize the truth, if we were wrong? And since, as it turns out, those who make an early guess take longer to see reality after it emerges than those who have not made a premature decision, what does this reveal about our preconceptions and prejudices generally?

I had somehow confused my two contacts when I put them in before the concert, so appropriately enough the whole thing was a little fuzzy throughout. But I could see enough to know (or did I make guesses based on preconceptions? hmmm...) that Rinde sang, acted, and danced his dance; Steve played electric guitar and narrated the tale; a projected slide, slide of, slide of a dog, slide of a dog running, dog running, running (with Steve's slide guitar underlay) was impossible to ignore; and eighth blackbird acted, moved props, gave a serious go at rocking out while singing and playing an electric bass, turned lights on and off... oh, and played their instruments like fiends, as they always do. But the most memorable part of the piece was not when the extroverted theatrical machine was in motion; rather, it was at the end, when it moved into the quiet, introspective place where Tin Hat had started, with Rinde softly intoning in his falsetto "and I sleep here like a baby...", permuting the phrase over and over, lulling us into the night.

thestandingroom Ventura women scream wooooooo! in the streets at 2am. 2:06 AM Jun 13th from Tweetie

P.S. I do not recommend staying in downtown Ventura.

Links for 2009-06-22 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-23T00:00:00-07:00

Decision time: Princess Eugenie vs Princess Beatrice » Ayyyy!
"It's the battle of the satellite dish hatted royal siblings"

Links for 2009-06-21 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-22T00:00:00-07:00

95 Percent Of Opinions Withheld On Visit To Family | The Onion
"Once you let go of the need to express your thoughts to your family, you suddenly feel much lighter"

Links for 2009-06-20 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-21T00:00:00-07:00

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Pogue's liver kicks ass
"Namaste, David. I owe you one."

Links for 2009-06-19 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-20T00:00:00-07:00

Puss 'n booted: North Woods house cat shows black bear who's boss - JSOnline
"The exchange lasted less than five minutes, but Weber said the cat was clearly the aggressor. The cat weighs about 12 pounds and Weber estimated the bear weighed about 300 pounds."

Links for 2009-06-17 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-18T00:00:00-07:00

Navel Maneuvers at think denk
oh dear.
Daniel Stephen Johnson: The Ojai Diaries: Part Two
"People, if you go to Ojai, CUSHION YOUR ASSES, I cannot stress that enough." 1. you seriously skipped out on music for 18? seriously?! 2. you should've heard the qng 11pm concert. and 3. that must have been you, right? i mean, we were the only people there under 60.
Sequenza21/ From Ojai (3): Friends Make Music Make Friends
"blackbird cellist Nick Photinos must have strong neck muscles; his time-keeping through head motions seemed more effective in maintaining the beat for the ensemble than many conductors can achieve with their arms and a baton"
Daniel Stephen Johnson: The Ojai Diaries: Part One
"The crowd was surprisingly old for a new music festival; I'm used to the Brooklyn Vegan-looking crowd at the Bang on a Can marathon. It's nice to have a reminder once in a while that old people can be AWESOME"
Out West Arts: Ojai Festival 09
"the camaraderie of the ever changing ensembles was clear. They were having fun experimenting in nearly every direction you could think of"
Sequenza21/ From Ojai (2): What Boundaries?
"With the quiet reprise of the aria, the notes then died away and we heard the crows in the oaktrees, and then the faint noise of traffic. Finally some clod in the audience had to show that he really knew the work had ended as he became the first to break the spell with loud applause"

O HAI!!

2009-06-12T09:20:25-07:00

NORA SEZ, IM ON UR PEEYANO KEYZ, PREMIERING UR KITTEH CONCERTO. I CAN HAZ PERFORMANCE AT OJAI?

(Here's the BBC report, in English.)

I'm driving 360 miles down the coast to the Ojai Music Festival today, which this year is under the artistic direction of eighth blackbird. Appropriately, there's already plenty of Tweeting going on there, where last night's concertgoers heard Thierry de Mey's awesome Musique de Tables and George Crumb's Music for a Summer Evening. A nameless entity known only as @OjaiFestivals seems to be particularly excited about tonight's premiere of a music/theater work called Slide by Steve Mackey, performed by the 'birds, Mackey and Rinde Eckert. Click here for the full weekend-long festival program.

And if Ojai doesn't hold interest for you, check out #newmusicanagrams, a charge led by @HurdAudio (Devin Hurd -> V.D.?!? Run! Hide!) and @briansacawa (Brian Sacawa -> Cabana Is Raw).

Time to get on the road. You can expect occasional communiqués @thestandingroom KTHXBAI!!!

The Sweeping Insensitivity of This

2009-05-28T23:29:47-07:00

O Lord, forgive me for simultaneously laughing and thinking of the Ligeti Requiem when I listen to this.

BONUS TRACK: Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima as the soundtrack to an episode of the Care Bears. (You have to click the words "Threnody and the Care Bears"; h/t Chris Foley)

Previously on TSR's Inappropriate WWII References through Contemporary Music: I CAN HAZ WATER?