I'm back in Berkeley for a week for the Berkeley Symphony's Under Construction concert, where they will be reading excerpts from my dissertation piece, Anaphora. I always find the travel time useful for updating things on the website.

I've changed the podcast page to reflect a recent endeavor I've begun in New York City. In the past month, I've joined the staff of WKCR as a New Music DJ, hosting the Monday 3-6 PM slot of Afternoon New Music. It's been a terrific experience getting three hours of playing some of my favorite New Music and answering calls from the electic group of listeners. Also, I get to follow the legendary Phil Schaap, a true scholar of jazz. On the new page there are links to the WKCR webpage, their streaming audio feeds, and a list of music played on previous shows.

I also received some good news about my ongoing work on Pierre Schaeffer. The journal Organised Sound has agreed to publish an extended essay on Schaeffer and phenomenology. Thanks to the post-doc, I've had time to revise it an even gave a version of it as a colloquium talk at Columbia. It's due out sometime in Spring '07, so keep a look-out for it!

Well, Sunday is the Berkeley Symphony concert and, if all goes well, I may have some new audio for the site soon. I'll keep you posted.

Two new events have been added to the upcoming gigs page and there's a little something for both the East and West Coasters to enjoy.

First, I'll be giving a talk entitled "Pythagoras on the Radio: Pierre Schaeffer's Phenomenology" as part of the Columbia University Music Colloquium Series on the afternoon of Nov. 10th. The talk will touch on some of my dissertation material and a paper I've been working on for publication. If you are in New York and are interested in Schaeffer's work then you should definitely come. It's free and open to the public.

Second, I've just sent off the parts to the Berkeley Symphony for a reading of Anaphora scheduled as part of their Under Construction series. I'm looking forward to hearing the piece, getting a chance to talk about it with the audience and meeting the other composers-- not to mention, a much needed trip back to the the Bay Area! If you are in Berkeley on December 10th, please come! It's also free to the public and a great chance to hear a great orchestra play some new music.

Well, I guess its official now. I'm moving to New York City in August to spend the next two years as a post-doctoral fellow in the Music Department of Columbia University. I'll be teaching half-time and working on some other projects: 1) turning the dissertation into a manuscript for a book, 2) publishing articles and 3) completing a couple of commission. I'm going to miss all my friends and gigs in the Bay Area, but I'm also looking forward to seeing old friends and playing new gigs in New York City. 

But before leaving I'll have been in Studio D at Fantasy Records twice in July, recording two records -- one with Frank Jackson and one with Jason Myers. Frank's record is with a quintet (featuring the amazing Noel Jewkes), and captures some of the tunes that Frank and I have been playing for almost a decade now. Next weekend Jason and I go in the studio to document a small sample of the many arrangements we've developed organically over the past few years, playing regularly at Houston's. I'm looking forward to hearing the rough mixes whle suffering through the August heat in NYC!

The upcoming gigs page is starting to get very bare as the move approaches. But there is some good news on the horizon. Anaphora is going to be read by the Berkeley Symphony for their Under Construction Series on December 10th. So I'll be back in Berkeley then, and look forward to seeing everyone!

More news soon, after the move...

The doctoral dissertation has been completed (and I have the lollipop to prove it!). It now has an official title: The Music of Skepticism: Materiality, Intentionality, Forms of Life. For those interested in the final shape of the work, I have updated the writings page to describe it in more detail, including an abstract and table of contents.

Three new postings on the site:

The recording of neither superidealized guidance nor caprice is now up on the compositions page. It is a live recording from the recent April 3rd concert and, after a little bit of EQ, it sounds terrific.

While going through the last minute adjustments and testing for an the upcoming group sound installation at Berkeley this coming Saturday, I decided to record a short excerpt as a teaser. Because so many of the sounds came from previous work done for On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and due to the open nature of that particular ongoing cycles of pieces, I decided to add it under that heading. If you look on the compositions page, you will find the excerpt along with a long-ish description of the work and its connection to the work done by my colleagues at Berkeley. The installation involves some extensive Max/MSP work, and there is a snapshot of the top level in the description (for those who are interested in looking under the hood).

I´ve never been completely satisfied with the German recitation at the beginning of the Melodrama, so I finally decided to do something about it. Thanks to help from Philipp Blume and Amy Schroeder, Duncker´s awful German poem now has an English translation that is just as hoary and sentimental. The entire work in much improved, and while it was in the sequencer I did a little bit of mastering and touching up to help improve the overall sound quality. I also took an old talk I gave on the piece, and revised it into a descriptive essay about the work. My sense is that this piece is always a bit mystifying the first time you hear it, but after having a description to guide one through, it becomes much clearer. What can I say, it's program music! Even if you have already heard the Melodrama, I recommend giving it another listen. It still holds up, and I can´t think of another electronic work quite like it.

The first week of April is going to be a busy time, musically.

Rehearsals are underway for the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players concert on April 3rd. I couldn't be happier with the ensemble for my new piece, neither superidealized guidance nor caprice. Because the piece is semi-improvised (the players have specific sounds and very precise rules about co-ordination with the ensemble, but few specifications about pitch and duration of the sounds), I look forward to hearing how the piece develops after the players get familiar with the notation and settle in comfortably.

In advance of the live recording of the Brian Kane Trio on April 6th, I have posted a recording of the trio playing Elligton's magnificent composition, "Black and Tan Fantasy" and added it to the jazz podcast. If you are in Berkeley and can make it to Anna's for the live recording, it promises to be a terrific evening.

Two new postings on the writings page: 1) After giving the talk earlier today at Spark 2006, I have posted a pdf of Improvising Tape Music. 2) In the midst of meeting many new musicans, composers and researchers at the festival, I have been asked quite a few times about the dissertation work with which I'm currently involved. Thus, I have posted a brief summary of the philosophical portion of the dissertation. It was the paper I distributed to the fellows at the Townsend Center for the Humanities at the beginning of the fall semester. Although the daily process of writing has clarified and focused the direction of the dissertation since the time this summary was written, I feel that it still has some value in describing the work I'm engaged with. Hopefully, others will find it useful.

I'm off to Minneapolis this week for Spark 2006, giving a paper entitled "Improvising Tape Music." The paper looks at the role of real-time sound processing and improvisation in the creation of fixed medium works (what used to be called "tape music"). Rather than the typical manner in which tape music has been described as the apex of compositional rigor (wiping out the perfomer; no inaccuracies of score reading; what Andy Hamilton has described as the "aesthetics of perfection," etc.) I want to revisit the question of tape music by thinking through the way in which improvisation has had an historical connection to the production of classic tape music (i.e. Boulez improvising in various styles for Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer) as well as other works like Miles Davis' Bitches' Brew and A Tribute to Jack Johnson, which edit together various improvised bits into a work. How aesthetically relevant is improvisation when listening to such pieces? This is a question that concerns some of my recent work in tape music, in On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (which has yet to be posted on this site, but will very shortly).

Pianist and performer Sebastian Berweck is coming to Berkely this week to give a concert on February 18th, at CNMAT. He will be playing works primarily from a series of piano pieces he has initiated, entitled Taurus CT600. The program: Sebastian Claren, Philipp Blume, Holger Klaus, Thomas Wenk, and Evan Johnson. Much of this music is written by younger composers, and rarely gets the chance to be heard outside of the small communities we all seem to form around our respective institutions and homes. Sebastian's ties to the New Music scene in Freiburg and Hamburg (where he currently lives) affords him a special connection to many of the teachers and students in Germany who neither fit into the simple New Musical categories of Spectralism or New Complexity, nor are as internationally famous as Lachenmann or Rihm. (I'm thinking of people like Mathias Spahlinger, Nicolaus A. Huber, Cornelius Schwehr, and their students, et al.) The value of hearing such music live cannot be underestimated, as an essential component in making one reconsider and reevaluate the means, methods, and habits to which one has become accustomed as a composer.