Ah, to be bourgeoisie. The Franz Liszt Memorial Museum in Budapest features a reconstruction of the 5-room apartment where he lived for his last seven years. Pianos (including what seems to be a Vorsetzer) paintings, furniture (including my favorite -- the desk with a pull-out dummy keyboard), and doodads now populate the space. If you're in the neighborhood, stop on in! Then visit the Kodaly Memorial House around the corner to see that composer's Edison cylinder recorder and some touching folkloristic photos of his using it. Oh, and it is also an erudite kind of place -- I wonder how it fared during post World War II-era shared-housing communist Hungary.
And now, to install a dummy keyboard under my desk.

What's keeping me from composing? Well, lots of things! Include my new inane Cafepress store, the Schnitzelshop! Satisfy all your punny musical apparel needs at the Schnitzelshop. Then visit Steakhausen.info for more inspiration.

Following a series of excellent performances in April and May, flutist Paul Dunkel has released a live CD of the program on MSR Classics. The recording, from a concert on 1 May at Christ & St. Stephen's Church in New York, includes a superb performance of my flute sonata Dal Dosai, (published by Tritone-Tenuto, and previously recorded by Thomas Robertello). Pianist Peter Basquin accompanies, and does a finger workout.


LINK to MSR Classics product page
LINK to amazon.com listing

This is old news as far as news goes, but to every musician I play this CD for, it's very contemporary: The Butchershop Guitar Quartet performing The Rite of Spring in a fantastic and meticulous arrangement for two electric guitars, electric bass and drums. Their seemingly never-updated website includes a few sound clips, spring rounds and the naming and honoring of the chosen one. If these pique your interest, the entire album seems to be available at amazon, though it also seems to include a gratuitous remix CD as well. Oh well. It doesn't diminish the guitar quartet arrangement. Oh, and make sure you listen all the way to the end. The last few notes are killer.

Heutige Schnnitzel! Show the world that you can appreciate a good erudite pun with these punny composer+food T-shirts. Now available at the Schnitzelmusik storefront: Bach Choy, Mozartichoke, Beetoven, Rimsky-Korsakoffee, Debusseafood, and Ligeti and Meatballs! Each unique pairing extends musical metaphors to their ineluctable culinary counterparts. Don't see the pairing of design and apparel you want? Email me! Composer + Food + T-Shirt = Music Geek Fodder!

Previously on Schnitzelmusik: Musical Puns
LINK to Schnitzelmusik store
LINK to Bach Choy
LINK to Mozartichoke
LINK to Beetoven
LINK to Rimsky-Korsakoffee
LINK to Debusseafood
LINK to Ligeti and Meatballs

"And you shall inscribe this image words upon the lightswitch of your bathroom and upon your gates."

Now available via Schnitzelmusik's auxiliary store on Cafepress.com: The Toothless Lightswitch Cover! If you like daily reminders of the awesome of the power of brushing and flossing, bind this as a sign upon your lightswitch. If you are not overly self-conscious of your guests' saying "Ew!" when they enter your bathroom, then this delightful item is for you. Let this be a symbol before your eyes!

LINK to product page

I dug up this instructions page I created for my never-finished composition "Forward Thinking Singing Backwards." Click on the image for full-size and try it out! Since the goal is true acoustic reversal, the backwards singer must be conscious of every sound, so I have used the International Phonetic Alphabet in the notation. Singing and whispering circumvents the difficulty of mimicking reversed speech intonation and make for a fun experiment in composing for a choir of backwards singers. In a 1998 reading session with Indiana University's Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, this whispered passage sounded frighteningly cool:



email me for the answers to these backwards puzzles.

Jeroen Offerman took three months to learn to backwards-sing Stairway To Heaven and performed it memorized. Backwards speaking is incredibly non-intuitive; to speak in true acoustic reverse, elements like dipthongs and plosive consonants have to be reversed, and they do so in surprising ways. To truly complicate matters, add in the backwards rise and fall of the intonations of speech. When I experimented with backwards speech, this last element made my head hurt. Singing, however, effectively removes the complex pitch contours of speech, and makes things much easier. I'm not sure if Offerman had all this in mind when he set to work on his crazy project, but it very impressive for its breadth and zeal! This performance was featured as a 'menu' on the McSweeney's DVD Wholphin.

LINK to QuickTime video

UPDATE: LINK via YouTube, the video reversed, showing exactly how Offerman sang it.

My short composition The Lower Leaves of Trees for SATB choir a cappella won San Francisco Choral Arists' New Voices Competition. The ensemble will perform the piece on three Bay Area concerts in June. I am very excited to finally hear this work -- it was born while I was a student of Lukas Foss at Boston University; but it has been incubating since then. Check this space for a recording in June!

LINK to San Francisco Choral Artists
LINK to MVB Concerts page

Tropical Storm Tammy lives! We remember your ten days of continuous rain in the Northeast. We remember your ministry of green tree leaves all the way into November. We remember your dismantling of New England's leaf-peeping season. And now we praise you again, as you have given early and plentiful buds to our trees and soaring pollen levels to our eyes and respiratory systems. Hosanna! Hosanna!

The April/May 2006 issue (print only) of Relix is a Frank Zappa Special and it includes a short article I wrote with Jesse Jarnow. We analyze a few recognizable musical characteristics of Zappa's non-classical compositions, providing musical examples, commentary, and scatology. Richard Gehr edited the multi-faceted feature.

THE MANY MINDS OF FRANK ZAPPA edited by Richard Gehr
A maverick guitar god, stand-up comedy singer, avant-garde composer and one-size-fits-all provocateur, Frank Zappa—dare we say—stands a close second in terms of jamband inspiration to the big guy in the black T-shirt, what, with his intricately composed jazzrock, group improvisations, audience participations, frisky electronics, rhythmic conundrums, and all manner of spontaneous tomfoolery. That considered, we are at long last tipping our hat to American music’s great cosmic maximalist.

LINK to relix.com

Suffering from Third Degree Weberns? Perhaps you have a hankering for a Lullypop or some Honey Nut Berlioz? Then Ramon's page of Musical Puns is for you! Pour yourself a cup of Pro-coffee-ev and get ready to slap your forehead in punny disbelief! There are a few Boston University-specific entries, but most are already timeless classics.

LINK via theramon.com

We knew that Captured! By Robots' 2006 tour would incarnate JBOT and the gang as a wedding band, but Pollstar reports this morning that the band will actually be performing the nuptuals as well.

[T]his spring's outing is called the C!BR Gets Married tour, and the band is recruiting audience members to tie the knot at each show. "Gay or straight or re-marriages, we don't care," the band said. "JBOT will be fully ordained as a minister from the Universal Life Church, and as such, the weddings will be legitimate." . . . With shows planned in more than two dozen states, the band will cover much of the country, though engaged fans should be prepared to travel if their town isn't on the itinerary. As the band says, "If you're not willing to drive a few hours for the love of your life, maybe you're not really ready to be married."

Indeed.

LINK to Pollstar story. LINK to Captured! By Robots