January 2012
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“L.A. gets no respect as far as culture goes, unless you’re into visual art”
Guitarist Nels Cline of Wilco, in this LA Times interview. Another quote:
“we all have a chip on our shoulder in L.A. because everyone hates us and thinks we’re plastic and shallow”
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“While the cars and planes drive faster, the air gets dirtier, and the stock markets are on a roller coaster, we sit in a classical concert … and expect a kind of detached sublimity that has nothing much to do with real life” pianist Marino Formenti quoted here
Yes, fast cars, dirty air and stock market volatility are clearly the best examples of what real life is like...
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December 2011
5 posts
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November 2011
6 posts
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“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Rosa Luxemburg
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“Someone told me that it’s the only time that Japanese women are allowed to...”
– Kerry Candaele, speaking about why Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is popular in Japan. In this LA Times article
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October 2011
5 posts
“The explosive expansion of technological resources has led, paradoxically, to an impoverishment of the language of music.” Frederic Rzewski in this wonderful NYT article. Here’s another quote: “If the “avant-garde” has no soul — if it is simply a branch of the market — then it has given up its historical claim to leadership. It is dead. But the questions that...
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“Schoenberg’s bizarre fantasy of becoming the savior of the Jewish people, broadcasting messages from a ship that was to have been supplied by President Truman.” quoted by Alex Ross from Sabine Feisst’s Schoenberg’s New World
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September 2011
1 post
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May 2011
1 post
“Trader Joe’s is for overeducated and underpaid people, for all the...”
– (Founder of supermarket chain Trader Joe’s, Joe Coulombe, in this L.A. Times interview)
April 2011
4 posts
“But these huge institutional orchestras are like imperialist armies that have...”
– Violinist/conductor Joseph Swensen, quoted in this N.Y.T. article
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“Such results have managerial implications. The systematic use of this technique...”
– From this study showing that playing music with “pro-social empathy” resulted in larger restaurant tips.
“Yeah, well, I guess “opera” and “disappointment” go together like a horse and carriage.” Marcel Proost (a character in John Adams’ blog Hell Mouth)
March 2011
3 posts
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– “Dalí, it seems, also associated pianos with sexuality – a link formed in his childhood by a book of venereal diseases that his father left open on the family piano to teach his son the perils of promiscuity.” from this article on WFMU.org
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February 2011
2 posts
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“I think you should all go to a John Cage concert. And then you’ll come back to the next one I have and you’ll like it.”
Frank Zappa, age 22, during a Q&A session following a concert at Mount St. Mary’s College, May 19, 1963
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January 2011
3 posts
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December 2010
7 posts
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“in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads.” From this article which calculates that total U.S. television watching every year is equivalent to the amount of time required to write 2000 Wikipedias.
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“We’re thrilled that ‘Jeopardy!” is considered a benchmark of ultimate knowledge.” (Harry Friedman, producer of Jeopardy!, announcing that a super-computer called Watson will compete on the show. link)
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November 2010
1 post
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October 2010
2 posts
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What would John Adams dance to?
“Meanwhile, on a nearby dance floor, John Adams, the man described by the New Yorker as possibly “the most vital and eloquent composer in America,” was shaking his groove thang to a cover of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” ” From this L.A. Times article. THIS JUST IN: Composer John Adams claims that the above statement does not refer to him, but...
September 2010
4 posts
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“all the looming sort of Carmina Burana scary music that gets played in some people’s minds when you talk about Elizabeth Warren” … Local KPCC talk-show host Patt Morrison on September 16, 2010, suggests an unlikely soundtrack for consumer protection. Hear the interview here.
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“I’m still not totally sold on the idea that the best way to fight the scourge of Schoenberg-style 12-tone serialism is to write 600 insufferable minimalist art compositions. It’s like trying to fight World War II by painting everyone’s doorknob blue.”
……Vice Magazine review of Philip Glass’ String Quartets.
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August 2010
2 posts
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“You achieve nothing without self discipline. Whether you’re a bohemian or not. “
Esa-Pekka Salonen, in this advertisement for Koskenkorva Vodka.
Check out Phil Glass selling scotch here.
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July 2010
5 posts
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“Go home this week and write one complete piece per day, each one about a different kind of soup” Composition lesson from composer Sam L. Richards commenting here.
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“Squeeze your bottom. That’s the key to high notes. I have a big bottom, and big high notes.” Opera singer Jane Eaglen, quoted here, explains that her body is her instrument.
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