Thornton School of Music Chamber Marathon

More shameless school promotion...

Every semester, the Thornton School of Music's Chamber Music department puts on a Chamber Music Marathon where the students, placed in groups at the beginning of the semester, perform their semesters' work. It's called a marathon because for three days, there are performances back to back from 5-midnight (approximately) and audience members have the freedom to choose which performances to go to or they stay and enjoy all evening's performances. :) This year's marathon starts tonight and ends Wednesday night. On the door of Newman hall, there is a schedule of who is playing what, when. If you have a chance, come to watch a piece or two! (John Kreager and I are in a quartet together and we perform tomorrow Dec 1 at 6 PM)

Hope to see you there!

Stomp about Stomp!

Trying to categorize Stomp is impossible, so I'm just going to try and describe them the best I can. First and foremost it’s a performance group. They are a percussion ensemble that utilizes everyday objects such as plastic bags, trash cans (both plastic and metal), brooms, water, matchboxes, and lids to create amazing works of art that often involve a combination of acting, movement and story. What I love about Stomp is their unique sense of style that represents an exquisite set of skills that it takes to put one of these pieces together.

The video below entitled Brooms, is one of their most classic pieces. The basic structure of their piece revolves around several complex rhythmic segments, which are broken down into parts for the performers so that every nuance is unique to a specific part. These nuances can include different rhythmic accents or timbre changes, which in this piece is facilitated by different parts of the broom and stomping (in the most literal sense). If you watch, it is just a repeated pattern that is different for everyone that is put together to create the piece as a whole. Try picking out just one person and watch what they are doing. Notice how they are really just doing the same thing over and over again, and then notice how their part meshes with everyone else's. Dance (mostly of the tap variety) is also a common visitor in their works and in some parts of this, the broom almost acts like a 3^rd leg, and a 4^th leg in the solo towards the end of the clip.

In this one, they even explore pitch as a variable in cutting the tubes different lengths to produce different pitches. Check it out!

Here’s an exploration of musical instruments from their show Stomp Out Loud. Literally, anything can be turned into an instrument. Love it. Actually, my favorite part of this is the fact that there’s a rough storyline to it, like a competition to figure out who has the best instrument. It’s amazing that something as simple as trash and rhythm can make someone laugh so hard. Or maybe that’s just me?

Stomp is a group that you can’t just put into a box to categorize it. They are an ensemble that is completely unequalled by any other. Needless to say, if I were to get cast in a production of Stomp, my life just might be complete. I’ll leave you with a couple of my favorites that I think are particularly clever, though there are a million that I love. Just get on YouTube, and get lost for a good hour or so.

p.s. Stomp is coming to LA and the Pantages Theatre Jan 26-Feb 7 2010. I’m trying to get a big group together so we can get a discount on tickets. Contact me if you’re interested. :o)

World of Goo, a review (BP #3)

I'm kind of a tomboy in many ways. One reason I say that is because of my enjoyment of video games. My kind of video game must have most if not all of the following qualities: puzzle, adventure, story, action, and a cutely designed character or characters. (bonus points if it has an awesome musical score to go with it) Thus, when World of Goo by 2D Boy was introduced to me, it was love at first sight.

World of Goo is a perfectly made puzzle game with adorable goo ball species (these are the characters) with fantastically catchy and fun music. In the game, you use goo balls to build a bridge or structure to lead the remaining goo balls around various obstacles and into a pipe taking it to the World of Goo Corporation, also known as a step to the next level. For example, take a look at the images below.

There are a lot of different levels in this game that are increasingly more difficult to conquer, especially as more obstacles are added, such as spikes, poison, and windmills. In addition, as the levels progress, different kinds of goo balls that have different qualities come into play including ones that act like balloons and ones that explode when they touch fire. All of these challenges really make the player think how to most efficiently create the path to the pipe.

The puzzle aspect of it is what initially drew me to this game. It’s been a while since I played any kind of game that was fun and difficult to figure out. However, I caught on quickly, and have now completed most of the levels except for two that I haven’t quite gotten my mind around. So while I have really enjoyed this game so far, there are a few things I would want to add/make better if I were developing this game further.

First of all, the story is quite ambiguous and a more concrete one (if there is supposed to be one) would really give it that extra push for me. What's there of the story line is illustrated by "the sign-painter," who appears on every level and offers its advice or just quirky comments about the level. 

Also, even though there are there are achievements called “OCD” where you can replay each of the levels to either beat the previous amount of time it took to complete the level or get a certain amount of goo balls through to the World of Goo Corporation and a part of the game where the extra goo balls you have collected from each level go and you can compete with other players on the web to see who can build the highest tower, I sometimes feel like the game isn’t quite long enough. Because while these are both entertaining, I sometimes wish there were more levels to play around with and more kinds of goo balls to discover just to make the game more complex. After all, nothing beats the pleasure of going to a new “world” and discovering what kinds of obstacles and goo balls it may offer…

Setting aside the assumed principals of physics needed to truly conquer this game has become a fantastic venue of procrastination to school work while being intellectually stimulating in a way (way more so than Facebook, for example) I encourage you to check it out. You can download a trial version from their website and test out the first “world” on PC, Mac, Wii, and even Linux. Then, if you decide to buy it, you can either buy it from their website or the box version from Amazon.

Hope you have as much as fun as I am playing this game!

Michael Tilson Thomas Concert

So... shameless school promotion. :)

The Thornton School of Music celebrating it's 125th season, is having a concert with the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas on Monday 8/5/09 (tomorrow) at 7 PM and if you have a chance, you should come check it out! We're performing Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony (a very audience friendly piece) and Michael Tilson Thomas will be talking a little about his experience here. You can RSVP for free tickets on the Visions and Voices website here. Hope to see you there!

For your viewing pleasure, here's a preview:


Enjoy!

Hilary Hahn, violinist (BP #1)

People that have heard of Hilary Hahn probably know her for her work on the motion picture soundtrack of The Village. However, in the classical world, Hahn is also known for her incredible musicality and command over her instrument. The 29-year-old, 2-time Grammy-winning violinist is well known internationally and performs with orchestras around the world year after year.

If you have time, take a listen (this is an audio file from her album) to her 2001 Grammy-winning recording of the third movement of the Brahms Violin Concerto:

I love YouTube. A couple weeks ago, I also discovered a few clips of her collaboration with other artists, namely American folk-rock singer-songwriter, Josh Ritter, and British beatbox master, Beardyman. One of my favorite things to do with music is mixing styles and mediums of art to collaborate with others from other fields (like a musical with a character that plays the violin, or a really exceptional violinist collaborating with a pop/rock singer). Seeing a concert violinist collaborating with these kinds of artists is so rare, that I was so excited when I found this. And now I am just as excited to share it with you!

Here’s her performing Girl in the War with Josh Ritter from his album The Animal Years. If you want to read more about their collaboration, check out this article.

And for something really out of this world, here’s her with Beardyman at the Digital, Life, Design (DLD) Conference in Munich:

I remember being introduced to Hilary Hahn when I was 9, receiving my first Hilary Hahn CD, Hilary Hahn Plays Bach (1997), and being totally amazed. Ten years later, and while my classical palate has matured, I still love her grace and incredible technique. To me, she represents not only a fantastic artist, but a humble and personable one as well. Too often, there are artists (and this is not just limited to musicians) that are so high on their mighty horse that they have little time to respect their fans and be grateful for the opportunity they have been given to share their talent with the world. Hilary Hahn is definitely not one of them.

For example, something I love about her is that she is an avid writer who keeps her own blog from her website called Hilary’s Journal. She posts from her various adventures when she has down time on tours. From her entries, readers get a peek into her life and personality. She states, “If you're curious to find out what it's like to be a nomadic classical musician, a violinist, a 28-year-old, a modern instrumental troubadour, or just a woman looking at the world around her, you've come to the right place.” Since I discovered her online journal a couple months ago, I have really enjoyed reading her little “anecdotes”, as she calls them. Enjoy and take a read! :0)