Blogarithm

The fact that you are a musician has somehow eluded me until now. What instrument?

I've played the piano for ... about twelve years now. This is my third year of actually composing things, since I started doing that at the same camp two years ago.
 
Also I took cello lessons for a few months, but that was more to know how to write more idiomatically for strings than to actually get good at it.

 

(This probably doesn't count, but I can passably imitate a generic brass instrument using nothing but my mouth.)

Chamber music, eh? Interesting. I don't much care for it, but my sax teacher loves it. What some of the pieces you're playing, if you don't mind me asking?

Chamber music, eh? Interesting. I don't much care for it, but my sax teacher loves it. What some of the pieces you're playing, if you don't mind me asking?

It generally tends to work better with a vintage (i.e. pre-WWII) Saxophone.

Of which I've seen like 10 in real life total. =P

And Sumiki's mainly playing his own compositions.

*Hint hint nudge nudge record it for us Sumiki* =P

 

I've played the piano for ... about twelve years now. This is my third year of actually composing things, since I started doing that at the same camp two years ago.

 

Also I took cello lessons for a few months, but that was more to know how to write more idiomatically for strings than to actually get good at it.

 

(This probably doesn't count, but I can passably imitate a generic brass instrument using nothing but my mouth.)

Sumiki is a bugle by acting he's playing a bugle?

Chamber music, eh? Interesting. I don't much care for it, but my sax teacher loves it. What some of the pieces you're playing, if you don't mind me asking?

I will admit that much of the chamber music repertoire is mind-bogglingly boring. I actually posted an essay here a while back about how much I dislike the music of Mozart, and much of the same arguments I have against his music go for a vast majority of the chamber music repertoire in general.

 

Listen to some late 19th and early 20th century stuff sometime - it has a remarkably different sounds and some really, really exciting pieces. I can recommend the music of the long-lived yet long-neglected Leo Ornstein. His Piano Quintet - especially the third movement - is just about as fast and exciting as you can get anywhere in music.

 

I don't really learn the piano parts of chamber music if it's not something I've written (and even then my brain is really weird about memorizing my own pieces). Most of the things I play are obscure bits of the late 19th and early 20th century repertoire, because obscure composers are kind of my thing.

 

After all, as great as a composer like Beethoven is, Beethoven's pieces have been played to death, reanimation, and then death again, whereas modern-day neo-romantics like Einojuhani Rautavaara, Beth Anderson, and Lowell Liebermann still don't enjoy more deserved fame.

 

Sumiki's mainly playing his own compositions.

*Hint hint nudge nudge record it for us Sumiki* =P

Like I've said, I'll post recordings once I have them. This concert's not 'til the 3rd.

Oh, sorry didn't see you say that you were going to record them.