News from the Music Industry

Uncertain Prospects for Radiohead CD (NYTimes.com via Yahoo! Finance)
Radiohead?s ?In Rainbows,? which was previously available for free online, is on sale in record shops on Tuesday. Will anyone buy the CD?.

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:37:47 GMT
Ben and the Alien or Ben Meets AL

Arizona’s “Employment of Unauthorized Aliens” law becomes effective January 1, 2008. The question is “Is AL an unauthorized alien? politics aside
this is just Ben Meeting AL at Element 115’s CD release Party- He thanks them for the Star treatment.
“Request a song. com
Alien Ghosts are Radical

Author: NotaTrollTravlin
Keywords: Unauthorized Aliens trolls Nota Element 115 ROCK CD release Party
Added: January 1, 2008

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:58:26 -0800

Who will permit me to release my DVD??
Daily Times - LAHORE: ?I used to release every CD of the processions and rallies of the Pakistan People?s Party (PPP) after permission from the late Benazir Bhutto. Now I have compiled a DVD of the speeches of both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) and Benazir, but …

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:45:00 GMT
Steve Lehman Quintet CD Release Celebration - Jazz-Quad
Steve Lehman Quintet CD Release CelebrationJazz-Quad, Belarus - Dec 31, 2007Ars Nova Workshop is pleased to announce the CD release celebration of On Meaning (Pi Recordings), the highly anticipated new recording from Steve Lehman\’s …

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:18:56 GMT

Delmark Records CD Release Parties- Sabertooth, Brad Goode, Keefe Jackson (All About Jazz)
Hey hey friends of Delmark - Wishing you a happy and healthy Holiday Season! We’d love to see you out in the New Year to celebrate our new Delmark jazz and blues releases with the Sabertooth Jazz Quartet, Little Arthur Duncan (CD and DVD), Keefe Jackson’s Project Project, and Brad Goode.

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:08:04 GMT
Uncertain Prospects for Radiohead CD
New York Times - Though hard-core fans almost surely have acquired the album, one way or another, Radiohead had plans to promote the CD release with a ?prerecording? of the band performing songs from ?In Rainbows? on the www.radiohead.tv Web site starting on …

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:41:00 GMT

Ivan the Terrible

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Liubov Sokolova, Nikolai Putilin, Chorus of the Kirov Opera, Rotterdam Philharmonic / Valery Gergiev (Philips 456 645-2) The images remain indelible, stark and monochromatic, rich in glowering close-ups, cruel and unusual faces in cruel and unusual times, bearing the terrible burden of a nation’s long and painful history. First there was Ivan, then Ivan and Anastasia, and while they were wed, Moscow burned. Bad omen. Enemies abroad (those marauding Tartars), enemies at home. The Boyar threat, the Opritchniki (the Tsar’s saviours, feasting in technicolour, a singularly audacious gesture from a singularly audacious director). All this we remember. But Eisenstein’s 1940s film is wedded to Prokofiev’s score and Valery Gergiev (looking for all the world like Ivan reborn in the booklet photograph) sees and hears so far beyond the narrative, between the cues of Prokofiev’s score, that it’s possible to forget that, in truth, that is what we have here - a collection of cues, stings and musical jump-cuts, reassembled after the composer’s death (by one Abram Stassevich) and stitched-up (in more ways than one) by the addition of a linking narrative, spoken in Russian or English depending upon which version you choose to perform. Gergiev chooses neither, preferring instead to let the music alone do the talking. And, because he has such a wonderful nose for characterisation, for atmosphere, for Gothic imagery (those close-ups again), the sense of narrative continuity is a powerful one. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra could pass for Gergiev’s own Kirov band - there’s real edge to their brass and oily woodwinds (the cannon-founders lead a mean push to Kazan) - and, needless to say, there’s a lot of history in the voices. That’s something else. An emotional subtext, a deeper historical resonance, an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a past, both glorious and inglorious, fast fading in the memory. When Gergiev and his strings finally catch sight of Kazan, it’s as if they do so for the last time.

What evidently side-swiped his busy career - as those of his contemporaries Peter Racine Fricker and Iain Hamilton - was the much-hyped rise of the next generation of Goehr, Maxwell Davies and Birtwistle, Williamson, Bennett and Maw in the early 1960s. When Searle’s crowning opus, the opera Hamlet, reached performance in 1968-69, it was equivocally received and, since his death in 1982, he has been little performed. High time, then, for a reassessment - though whether simply pumping out three symphonies in succession, as Radio 3 did last Tuesday evening, is likely to have revived his reputation, might be doubted. Nos 2 and 3, dating from 1957 and 1959 respectively, sounded, even in punchy readings by the BBC Scottish SO under Alun Francis, pretty much like cuts off the same roll: heavily descending serial themes over pedal-points, sinister fanfares on stabbing minor seconds and violent climaxes sounding, after all this time, not a little like the Hammer Horror film scores of the period (though, of course, many of those were composed by Lutyens). The one-movement Fifth Symphony (1964), in memory of Webern, proved more diaphanous in texture and substance. But any one of these symphonies alone might have made more impact programmed with the more lyrical side of Searle - as in the Poem for 22 strings (1950) or the Aubade for horn and strings (1955), which still haunt this pair of ears - or, again, with the wit of his Edward Lear setting The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (1951).

The programme was not helped by the blandness with which Geoffrey Baskerville read his introductory script - as if introducing Searle to schoolchildren. But at least it was modestly informative, which is more than one can always expect from what is currently among Radio 3’s most limply presented slots, Hear and Now.

Dora Magrath CD Release!

The Release party for Dora Magrath’s debut Album “Heartstrings - Live at Hampshire” is going down on January 18th!
Here are some links to help you on your way:
Cover art by:
www.myspace.com/chezprunelle
Dora Magrath:
www.myspace.com/doramagrath
Album Released on:
www.crankyyellow.com

Author: CrankyYellow
Keywords: dora magrath cranky yellow prunelle art album cd release party heartstrings singing songs regina spektor
Added: December 31, 2007

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:44:32 -0800

1 It’s Like That RUN DMC vs JASON NEVINS

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2 Stop THE SPICE GIRLS 3 My Heart Will Go On CELINE DION 4 Say What You Want TEXAS featuring THE WU TANG CLAN 5 Frozen MADONNA 6 Big Mistake NATALIE IMBRUGLIA 7 When the Lights Go Out FIVE 8 Brimful of Asha CORNERSHOP 9 Truly Madly Deeply SAVAGE GARDEN 10 Uh La La La ALEXIA ALBUMS 1 Ray of Light MADONNA 2 Titanic - Ost JAMES HORNER 3 Tin Planet SPACE 4 Life Thru a Lens ROBBIE WILLIAMS 5 Let’s Talk About Love CELINE DION 6 Pilgrim ERIC CLAPTON 7 Urban Hymns THE VERVE 8 Maverick A Strike FINLEY QUAYE 9 Left of the Middle NATALIE IMBRUGLIA 10 Return to the Last Chance Saloon BLUETONES RHYTHM AND BLUES ALBUMS 1 All Saints ALL SAINTS 2 Kiss Smooth Grooves 98 VARIOUS ARTISTS 3 Postcards from Heaven LIGHTHOUSE FAMILY 4 Big Willie Style WILL SMITH 5 Ocean Drive LIGHTHOUSE FAMILY 6 Much Love SHOLA AMA 7 Heavy Mental KILLAH PRIEST 8 LSG LEVERT/SWEAT/GILL 9 My Way USHER 10 Destiny’s Child DESTINY’S CHILD

Exposure to music and active participation in music making can enrich a child’s life both immediately and over the long term, fostering creativity and self-expression, transmitting cultural values, and contributing to physical, intellectual, and social development. After years of cutbacks, school districts throughout the country are restoring programs in music and the other arts. In 1980 only two states mandated instruction in the arts as a requirement for graduation; now 28 do. Research has shown that listening to music has beneficial short- and long-term effects on abstract reasoning ability. The most publicized study is the one associated with the so-called “Mozart effect,” in which college students who had listened to a Mozart piano sonata scored eight points higher than a control group on portions of an IQ test. In other research, the cognitive skills of preschool and elementary school-age children have shown improvement in response to music instruction. The renewed interest in integrating music into the school curriculum has also been influenced by the work of psychologist Howard Gardner, who, in his groundbreaking study Frames of Mind, challenged the limitations of traditional concepts of intelligence, listing musical ability as one of seven basic types of intelligence that need to be nurtured and exercised.

Development of musical aptitude

A child’s involvement with music begins even before birth. Studies have shown that the behavior of newborns changes when they are exposed to melodies sung or played to them during the third trimester of pregnancy . Newborns are sensitive to both the pitch and volume of sounds, and they even react differently to different styles of music. In the first months of life, infants already have an impressive ability to discriminate among different pitches, and by the age of three months a baby can repeat specific pitches with a high degree of accuracy. An infant’s sense of pitch also plays a role in speech development by making adult speech patterns more readily understandable, beginning with the exaggerated pitches and rhythms of baby talk, or “motherese or parentese ” and extending to the pitch characteristics of ordinary adult speech, such as the tendency for voices to rise at the end of a question. An appreciation and understanding of the musical structures that predominate in one’s own culture also begin in infancy. Six-month-olds can discriminate tonal relationships in a wide variety of musical scales, including those used in cultures vastly different from their own. By the age of one year, however, this openness has begun to disappear as infants’ musical expectations become shaped by the acoustic intervals that characterize the music of their own culture.

Infants make their first rudimentary attempts at singing as early as eight months of age with musical babbling and show the ability to repeat distinct pitch patterns by 12 months. Coordination of movement and rhythm develops by the age of 18 months, as does the ability to repeat specific melodic intervals (as opposed to single pitches). When actual singing does begin, usually between the second and third years, words are learned first, followed by rhythm, and then pitch. By the age of five, a child has acquired a repertoire of songs. Kindergartners can typically recognize musical phrases and understand the concepts of tempo (whether music is fast and slow) and dynamics (loud and soft). Seven-year-olds can identify pitch differences as small as a quarter tone. A sensitivity to the concept of tonality (what key a piece is in) develops between the ages of five and eight, together with the ability to recognize harmonic changes, and is manifested in the ability to differentiate major from minor keys, recognize when a melody has been transposed into a different key, or identify an incomplete cadence (one that fails to resolve to the tonic, or “home tone”).

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A special musical talent that is now thought to be influenced by both heredity and environment is perfect pitch, the ability to recognize the exact pitch of any sound and, in return, to accurately produce any pitch without being given a starting pitch as a reference point. (Someone who can sing a given pitch with the aid of such a reference point–also a special and valuable skill–is said to have relative pitch.) Although many trained musicians do not have perfect pitch, musical training does foster the development of this talent, which is much more prevalent among trained musicians than among the general population. Recent studies have found that perfect pitch tends to run in families. Researchers plan on studying the DNA of some of these families in hopes of isolating the specific gene that carries this gift.

Fostering music appreciation

Delmark Records CD Release Parties- Sabertooth, Brad - All About Jazz
Delmark Records CD Release Parties- Sabertooth, BradAll About Jazz, PA - 15 hours agoDelmark CD release parties and other important holiday shows! Delmark CD/DVD release parties in 2008! Come out and celebrate with both new and veteran …

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:06:24 GMT

Soloists, BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Andrew Davis

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(NMC D050) If you believe the anti-Birtwistle lobby, a recording of The Mask of Orpheus should show it up for the musically empty thing it is. Strip away the dense, often perplexingly multi-layerd stage activity and the mystique is gone, the score is revealed as meaningless sound and fury. I confess: even as one of those who was blown away by ENO’s 1986 stage premiere, I had my doubts. Could the music hold the attention without the action? The answer is yes. In fact, I was surprised at how quickly each of the three substantial acts seemed to run its course. Even the purely electronic dances (accompanying the miniature “Passing Cloud” and “Allegorical Flower” ballet sequences) didn’t stretch patience too far. Act 2 - Orpheus’ ultimately futile descent into Nightmare/ Hades to rescue Euridice - is more or less musically self-sufficient, an immense elemental crescendo followed by desolation and catastrophe (Orpheus’ suicide). But Acts 1 and 3 are full of remarkable things: the tortured birth of music, speech and poetry at the beginning; the sacrifice of Orpheus (another version of the myth!) before the end; and the strange, primal dreamscape of the final pages - electronic sounds that vaguely recall but entirely transcend moody New Ageism. In such a huge cast of singers and players, it’s hard to pick out individuals for praise. But Jon Garrison as Orpheus The Man (as opposed to Orpheus The Myth) sings, yells, gabbles and stammers magnificently. Marie Angel’s appropriately titled “First Hysterical Aria” as the Oracle of the Dead pierces and fixes itself in the memory. Contributions from the BBC Singers and the winds, brass and percussion of the BBC Symphony Orchestra are predictably strong and conductor Andrew Davis (with assistant Martyn Brabbins) holds it together as if he knows it intimately. Recording and presentation are excellent too, though be prepared to do some serious homework on the text before sitting down to follow it with the music.