Piano-Playing Cat

This is probably old news.

But I didn't discover it until last month.

And now, the cat who plays piano.

This Must Have Been An Awesome Field Show

Check out this footage of a marching band from Michigan playing the music from South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. It looks like it's from a show that features music from Family Guy and the Simpsons as well, which must be a hell of a field show. Back in my marching band days, we did some fun field shows like that as well. Unfortunately, we never got to play "What Would Brian Boitano Do?".

Anyway, the songs featured in the video are "What Would Brian Boitano Do?", "Blame Canada", and "La Resistance/Medley". Too bad they didn't go for the whole musical, because it's really great.

More Joy Division

Transmission/She's Lost Control (my first experience with Joy Division)
Dead Souls (sadly, poor sound quality)
Shadowplay

A Passage To India

Check out this article. I'm pretty intrigued myself. When I get my hands on his music, I'll definitely be writing about it.

Suggested Listening #7

Seeing as I spent the past five days writing a paper about Felix Mendelssohn, it's only appropriate that I write about him here.

Mendelssohn was a composer who, during the "progressive" Romantic era, chose to fall back on the Classical idiom. Thus he wrote music that, to a 19th-century audience, seemed dated. Of course, he was far too young to be old-fashioned. He simply wrote what he loved- music in the vein of Bach or Beethoven, but he wrote it from a 19th-century perspective. This quality makes his music uniquely beautiful.

So, check out Mendelssohn's 3rd Symphony, also known as "Scottish" (A Minor). It's really wonderful and moving.

Missed A Day (AKA Orchestra Readings Continued)

So, I've come to the most "wonderful" part of my orchestra reading project... PARTS. That means going through the piece with a fine tooth comb and making sure that every dynamic marking and every note translated over into the parts. Then I have to return to Staples Copy Center (my home away from home in case you haven't noticed) and print and copy and papercut myself until I have all the parts printed and enough copies made in case people lose them, which can very well happen.

Still, I'm excited about the reading. Not so much excited about the rest of the homework I have to do. There's still a twenty page music history paper to write, and a trip to the NY Public Library (Music Branch) to embark on. Among other things, of course.

Carmina Burana- Part 2

I'm not going to talk about the rest of the piece quite yet, but I just found a Carmina Burana film on Youtube from the 70s. It's pretty interesting... to say the least. Not every word is pronounced correctly and that's a little distracting, but the music is well done. It's still pretty good overall, almost comedic with the addition of actors "performing" the songs. Check it out.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9