Welcome interstate managers

Whoa. So my liveblogging of the 2007 Bang on a Can Marathon has become something of a phenomenon. It's by far the most popular thing I've ever posted to this blog, thoroughly eclipsing the previous favorites Like I'm blowin' on a sax, blowin' my gats (a discussion of the much-maligned rock saxophone) and Miles to go before I sleep (the culmination of my ~~blogwar~~ polite exchange with Ethan Iverson about the merits of Miles Davis's 1970's recordings). But apparently what people really want from new music bloggers is a first-hand account of the effects of sleep deprivation.

Anyway, what this means is that there are a lot of people reading this blog for the first time, so, uh, hey everyone. Thanks for coming, make yourself at home. Gee... there sure are a lot of you all of a sudden.

You can read my press bio if you want but the short version is that I write music, most of it for my 18-piece band, Secret Society, but some of it for Pulse. Since you're here, perhaps you'd like to listen to what I do -- click the links in the "Audio (MP3)" section to your right, or if you're really curious, you can browse through an audio archive of every gig we've ever played, warts and all. These are all complete versions of each tune (not excerpts, unless there was a problem with the recording) and they are all free. We don't have a studio recording. Yet. Hint hint.

After a fairly active winter/spring, Secret Society is taking a break from gigging over the summer. Many of the players are off touring their own projects, which gives me the opportunity to write some new music for the band. We will be back in force this fall. If you would like to be added to our mailing list, just let me know.

If you have or are involved in a big band and are interested in performing any of my music, some of it is published by Really Good Music, and the rest you can obtain directly through me.

This blog started out mostly as a home for Secret Society-related information, but quickly metastasized into what you see today: a blog about creative, independent new music in NYC, irrespective of genre. That's because I think people who make qualitative judgements about art based on genre distinctions are fucking retarded. If you call yourself a film buff, but you only ever watch domestic dramas, and then go around opining that any movie that is not a domestic drama -- crime flicks, sci-fi flicks, samurai flicks, thrillers, westerns, biopics, romantic comedies, etc. -- is not only a totally different art form from domestic drama, but is also objectively inferior simply by virtue of not being a domestic drama, people would rightly think you were a complete moron. Same goes if you had a similar single-minded fixation on kung-fu movies.

That said, my focus here does tend to lean towards the stuff that's normally labeled as "jazz" and "new (classical) music" because these scenes get relatively little attention in the blogosphere compared to indie rock or hiphop. But ultimately, what I'm most interested in is artists who are trying to make something cool and new happen. It's the "cool and new" part that appeals -- I could give a shit what you call it.

If something I write upsets you and you're looking for reasons to dismiss everything I say out of hand, please allow me to help you out. First off: I'm a blogger. That's really all you need right there. But if you're coming from the classical end of things, feel free to blow me off because even though I have a graduate degree in composition from a respected conservatory, it was in jazz composition. If you're a jazzer, you can safely discount my opinions because I'm now a full-time composer and no longer active as a pianist. And if you're an indie rock fan, do you really need a reason?

If you're wondering how I trained for the 27-hour Bang on a Can marathon, my "day" gig is as a music copyist. (My music prep site is here, if you're ever looking for someone.) In this line of work, I get a lot of practice toughing out all-nighters -- in fact, I just now completed my latest all-night copying gig. Hey, I gotta finance the big band habit somehow.

If you liked the BAOC liveblogging, you may be interested in some other recent reviews I've done for the blog. Here are links to a few:

Sam Rivers, Dave Holland, and Barry Altschul at the Miller Theatre

Composer Portraits series at Miller: Frank Zappa. Edgard Varèse. Julius Hemphill.

IAJE 2007 Coverage: Day 1. Day 2. Day 3. Photos Day 2. Photos Day 3.

Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd's Still Life with Commentator

Matt Shulman, Jie Ma, Erik Friedlander at Union Hall

Keys to the Future Festival of New Piano Music

Wordless Music #1: Glenn Kotche, Nels Cline, Jenny Lin, Elliott Sharp

Thanks all for stopping by. I hope at least some of you like this place well enough to keep coming back. I try to post as regularly as my schedule allows, but if you want instant notification every time something new goes up here, the best thing to do is to subscribe to the blog's RSS feed. You can do this in Safari or Firefox or using Google Reader, but if you're a Mac type and want an easy way to keep up with multiple blogs, I highly, highly recommend Vienna.