Reviews Are In

I am very pleased with this review from Time Out New York of Andy Russo's Mix Tape CD (with two tracks by yr. blogger). I mean, when something you wrote is called a "cubist boogie-woogie," you know you've made it. You can get that CD here.

And Jenny Lin's Insomnimania CD is also pulling in some excellent press. There's a nice precis in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which alas does not mention my work but gives her an "A" so how bad can that be? And another on a Web site called Culture Catch. That CD is available here.

A Vacation from Reality

I wish I could occupy the same planet as David Brooks. Where he lives, we have few problems save for a slightly plasticized society where packaging is our biggest menace. The recession is in our minds, the war is just, offshore drilling solves everything, and qualifications to lead are about resume over policy. But alas, I am grounded here on Earth, for better or for worse, with our endless war, a serious recession, global warming, an assault on science that disagrees with the bible, etc. So if anyone knows of any cheap tickets, please pass the information on to me. I could use the break.

Have you no decency, sir? After long last, have you left no sense of decency?

All Hail!

My good friend's new (and at-long-last, long-since-overdue) Web site: www.markadamo.com. The only thing that gives me pause is that Mark's extreme articulate wit and erudition, a treasure, something on which I've come to depend, has gone public. But I'll not be selfish, I'll share, and I do think we'll all be better for it.

Historic

Back and Ready to Roll

California seems a haze to me now as I return back to the swirling chaos of New York, to teaching, composing, living. Spent a glorious few weeks with my fantastic wife driving down the coast from San Francisco, seeing my old campus at Santa Barbara, and visiting old and new friends in Los Angeles. It was wonderful but exhausting. We ate a lot of mexican food (the best of which is only available on the opposite side from us, for some reason), checked out a little bit of a rehearsal for the Stewart Wallace/Amy Tan opera The Bonesetter's Daughter at the San Francisco Opera, saw a play about Beethoven (on which, more later), read good books, saw no movies nor spent any time in the water, and visited historic sites both of my own youth and of reality. Big Sur, the Henry Miller Library, a shopping center named after Huxley's forgetting drug. Enough said.

Thanks for patience, all of you, and I'll be updating regularly until the next vacation, scheduled tentatively for 2015.

One Last Thing: Mix Tape

Today Andy Russo's brillant CD Mix Tape streets. The record is a fantastic melange of many composers (I am proud to be in this crew) reacting to various pop songs in their own way. David Lang, Phil Kline, Marc Mellits meet Steppenwolf, King Crimson, The Stooges. My own contributions: Toscanini's Glasses based on "Play that Funky Music" and Good Times Just Seem to Pass Me By based on the Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties." Andy plays like a genius, like always, and the other pieces are varied, fascinating, and terrific. And dig the cool cool cover--as usual, the Russo CDs are visually compelling as well. Think of this record as a kind of new music "Basement Tapes."

Buy the CD here.

California Dreamin'

For the rest of August, I will be off in California, North and South, to return in September with fresh blogging perspective for you all. Have a great August, enjoy, see you on the other side of summer.

Last Minute Felsenmusick PSA: Opera On Tap!

Hello All:

As a bit of last minute good news, fantastic mezzo Jessica Miller-Rauch, one of the reining divas for the always-irreverent, always-wonderful Opera On Tap will be performing my song "To a Cabaret Dancer" as part of their evening tribute to Kurt Weill. And while I am not Weill (I know...), I am honored to be considered in his company, and of course my humble little song--a setting of a poem by Djuna Barnes, about a taxi dancer--pays deep homage to the master. Jessica does this number brilliantly.

The show is at the Parkside Lounge, Downtown New York.