A Journey to Interstellar Space
I love this album as well... Very contemplative and intense music!
David Byrne appears on Marc Maron's WTF Podcast -- listen
I loved David Byrne's book, How Mysic Works... Check out this interview!
Listening Lately
Here goes... I've been getting back into some more listening the past week or so... Here's what I'm into lately... Sean Rowe - Sean has a new EP out, called Her Songs. I especially like "Ode to Divorce" and "Soldier's Song". "EP" is a little misleading since there is a video to go with each of the 6 tunes on the album. Great stuff.
The Gaslight Anthem - I listened to the '59 Sound so much I got sick of it... I just realized this band has a few albums out since then! The latest is Get Hurt. I really like their sound!
Death Cab for Cutie - Kintsugi - I just love this album. Still listening to it. Bought tickets to their show at Merriweather Post Pavilion on September 13.
Valor Brass - yep, our album made it's way to my doorstep yesterday. Currently available here. We are thrilled with the sound from our engineer, Ed Kelly, at Cedar Knoll Media. Phil Snedecor, longtime director and trumpeter of Washington Symphonic Brass was our producer.
Berlin Philharmonic - I recently bought a one-week ticket to Berlin's Digital Concert Hall. Wow, what an experience! I binge-watched a number of pieces and concerts over the past week... check out their recent Mahler 5 with a new trumpet concerto called Aerial performed by Swedish virtuoso Hakan Hardenburger. There is also a great interview with Hakan and conductor, Andris Nelsons, given by Sarah Willis. I also enjoyed immensely the Wagner set from Siegfried/Gotterdammerung conducted by Daniele Gatti. $180 for a one-year ticket is quite a bargain when you see what you have access to on the Digital Concert Hall. Finally, check out a great behind the scenes tour of their production setup. Cool!
Alright, one more thing. This is cool. Great tune, performing, and possibly the best horn section name ever... Tim Akers and the Smoking Section. The tune is "Uptown Funk". Enjoy.
Cheers,
The Virtual Trombonist
Selling the Digital Experience
So today I find myself on a bus for a better part of the day, and with lots of time on my hands, children at daycare, and an electrical outlet for my phone charger, I'm doing what any technology junkie would do: spending the entire drive catching up on articles and video that I've bookmarked! One thing I keep coming back to is the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic. The folks in Berlin have done something very smart by outfitting the Philharmonie with a professional television studio and rigging their setup to broadcast all of their concerts live in HD. Another brilliant thing they've done is to feature the talents of Sarah Willis, fourth horn in the orchestra. Besides being a fabulous musician and having her own very successful "horn hangouts" online, Sarah has done a number of interviews that are accessible on the digital concert hall. The Philharmonic recently performed a program featuring a new work for trumpet and orchestra by HK Gruber called Aerial. The soloist was Hakan Hardenburger, for whom the piece was written. I got sucked in to watching an interview that Ms. Willis conducted with Hakan and the program's conductor, Andris Nelsons. I'll just get right to the point, the interview, and Mr. Hardenburger's insight into the process of playing and learning the piece was so fascinating, that I immediately bought a 7-day pass for the digital concert hall and watched the program on my long bus ride. What an amazing concert, soloist, and orchestra!
It's no surprise to anyone that an online digital presence is the future of classical music. Berlin has done it right. Not only can you watch live concerts in HD with fantastic audio quality, but they have an amazing back catalog of concerts, interviews with soloists and conductors, and documentaries about the orchestra. Know I will be binge-watching quite a lot of Berlin Philharmonic concerts over the next 7-days!
As we enter fully the era of constant connectivity and faster internet connections, this type of experience is only going to become more prevalent for all musicians. People fret that the Internet and mobile technology is going to make everyone more detached from their audience. Using the talents of Ms. Willis as an example, I don't think this could be further from the truth! What is now clearly critical is having the ability and desire to speak to an audience, conduct an interview, and otherwise engage people in a personal and informative way. Oh! It's those people skills my parents used to always talk to me about!
I feel fortunate the U.S. Marine Band has begun to live stream many of our own concerts. The band also has some very cool projects on line now, with my favorite being the recording and release of free PDF parts and scores for every March John Philip Sousa ever wrote! Their adding enough that the band is hiring a third full time audio engineer as well.
Ok, back to my looong bus ride and my digital concert hall ticket! If it seems I'm being secretive about where I'm headed, then well, I am! The Marines don't do anything the easy way, and today is no exception. More about our trip later when the cat is out of the bag!