Category: Music
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Is John Adams a terrorist suspect?
Ok. I’m the first to admit I didn’t particularly like Doctor Atomic. We saw the opening of John Adams’ latest opera in SF, and my personal feeling was that it was interesting, but it didn’t work. As the story goes, the librettist quit, and Adams and director Peter Sellars instead assembled a libretto from original…
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Another NY boomer wants 70s music, and mass culture, back
I won’t say it’s exactly amazing how often I hear music critics — or anyone — of a certain age lamenting the lost music of the ’70s. When I covered digital entertainment closely, I was on an influential mailing list full of ostensible music lovers, smart people, and every few weeks someone would argue that…
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Berlin in New York, our dancing, delightful orchestra
Berlin and New York are having a little love-in these days. It’s not just in the pages of the NYT, where gushing and usually (but not always) 66 percent fictional articles appear about the Wild Life In Berlin. The two cities are in the midst of a cultural interchange just now, swapping music and other…
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Visa woes and Haino screams
Two poles of Berlin existence yesterday, after sending lovely Ms. Peasant Glasses off to Hawaii for three weeks. After a year of pretending it didn’t exist, it was time for me to visit the friendly Ausländerbehörde, Germany’s version of the INS, again. I had my docs in order; income statements, proof of insurance, rental contract.…
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Droning Shiva-style in Alexanderplatz
I ran into this guy, India Bharti, playing in Alexanderplatz yesterday. He’s a wandering musician of uncertain (but distinctly sandy-graying) age, a white yogi type, sitting crosslegged, sunflowered, maybe deeply cliched right up to the point you looked at how he was making his sounds. He was playing a pair of homemade instruments: one a…
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Back in the nation of daydreamers
Almost twenty years ago I brought home a cassette copy of Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation from Cellophane Square records, stuck it in my parent’s car deck, and began an obsession with the band that hasn’t stopped. 1988 was a good year for me, music-wise; it was the same year that Nirvana started playing in Seattle…
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Worshipping in the electronic cathedral
The Electronic Church is behind an unprepossessing door on Greifswalder Str., behind an advertising poster that must be replaced every few days, when the Werbung people come around to stick their latest offers on the wall. But today, at least, there’s a small note written in black pen: “Electronic Church,” and a small arrow pointing…
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Collective patronage, a democratic arts funding
According to Sequenza 21, a mini-movement of art funding is happening beneath the surface of the debates over government versus corporate sponsorship. Small orchestras are pooling their resources to collectively commission pieces by contemporary composers, in the way that big groups in New York or Boston or San Francisco do fairly routinely. Apparently pianist Jeffrey…
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Not enough fire, devil masks, or battle axes
Granted, Lordi’s a hard act to follow. A battle axe that shoots little flames, and devil wings that come out (a little creakily, granted) right there on stage. Yeah, baby. But this year’s Eurovision just didn’t have that hummable, wtf, is that Gwar?! factor? But, ok, it had a large Ukrainian man of extremely ambiguous…
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New Spinal Tap short, with miniature ponies
Back with Marti DiBergi, it’s Spinal Tap, in a new short, back together for the 26th time in 25 years. Nigel is picked up off a horse farm, where he’s working with the miniature ponies, hoping one day to race them with miniature jockeys. David St. Hubbins is a hip-hop record producer, and Derek Smalls…
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Maerzmusik pt. 1: The trouble with texture
The Berlin Maerzmusik festival, a two-week series of contemporary music of various avant persuasions, is ongoing. We’re seeing several, ranging from noise theater to (relatively conventional) orchestra. The latter may be the biggest disappointment. Saturday was a Konzerthaus concert featuring the work of an Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin, preceded by a beautifully textured Ligeti piece…
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Live music, up one flight
I’ve been to concerts in halls no bigger than a living room. Last night was the first that was actually in one. We met another Berkeley/Bay Area expat a few nights ago, who’s in town turning a thesis on German music writing into a book. He’s also a guitar player, playing with a jangly band…
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A moment in time, a moment in bliss, a moment in SF
Concert pianist Jeremy Denk walks through Hayes Valley in San Francisco, in one of those states of wondering bliss that gives everything meaning and even ridiculous inanities a weird beauty. Good reading.
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String weekend
When passing through England for Bill and Karen’s wedding a few weeks ago, we saw posters for a festival of Sofia Gubaidulina’s work, put on by the BBC. We toyed briefly (very briefly) with the idea of coming back, but then realized it would naturally be broadcast and archived online. So this weekend we’ve been…
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Music karma, sonic books, and punctuality
A bit by way of explanation. Months, oh, months ago we saw that Sonic Youth was to play here. Having been in a bit of a dry spell musically, our fault, not Berlin’s, we immediately snapped up tickets. What other 25-year-old band is still so unremittingly creative, still rocks so hard, after all? They never…