Here it IS - ALL I KNOW² - The Second Edition

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The older blog, which has been alive since June 2004, is still available but I won't be adding to it. It's here

Other Minds has re-released a 1964 recording of 32 of Ned Rorem's songs, featuring Phyllis Curtin and Donald Gramm and others, with the composer at the piano. Rorem is a master of the art song (however you define it), and this recording, originally on Columbia, has been long out of print. I'll be featuring six of these songs on tonight's MUSIC FROM OTHER MINDS program on KALW, program #80, along with more vocal music by Ingram Marshall, Janis Mattox, Gyorgy Kurtag, and Neil Rolnick.

The program will be around for another week for streaming from the website.

Chris Villars' new collection of Feldman interviews and lectures, MORTON FELDMAN SAYS, is truly wonderful! I've been reading it randomly, and I'm always coming across surprises. Feldman was a great talker. And, with that raw Brooklyn accent, he could say the most intriguing things. For example, there's this wonderful interview with Charles Shere in 1967.

But he wasn't just enteraining. He had some really important things to say about music. For one thing, I learned that considered attitude more important than musical procedures. He said, in 1980: "For any music's future, you don't go to the devices, you don't go to the procedures, you go to the attitude. And you do not find your own attitude; that's what you inherit. "

I've been thinking about that statement quite a lot lately. That's perhaps what is ultimately revealed in any artist's work: an attitude.

Well, this book is 239 pages of attitude. Plus some very revealing images of his scores, and a detailed chronology. Read this book! And, there's a great companion book: Give My Regards to Eighth Street, his collected writings, edited by B.H.Friedman (no relation).

I plan to have more to say about the Villars collection soon. But I'm enjoying every page.

Victoria dragged me out to yet another horse show this weekend. This time it was up in Redwood park in the Oakland hills. It was a beautiful day, and Redwood is a good place to be on a beautiful day. There's been a small horse arena in Redwood for many generations, and it serves most of the local equestrian organizations in the East Bay. Classes from Victoria's trainer and others were competing on riding skills and jumping. We watched. Vic's horse, Suede, isn't quite ready for that yet, tho Vic seemed quite clear that next year she'd be out there, among the 12 year-olds and 50-somethings.

There was a lot of sitting around and waiting. And it is somewhat fascinating to watch these very large and powerful animals under the control of teenagers. More specifically, teenage girls. There were also a number of grown-ups with their horses. And one token male. But it did seem like this was definitely a girls sport.

To stand next to some of these horses, especially the thoroughbreds who come into private hands after their short careers at the track, is something quite amazing. You realize how powerful these animals are, and yet they'll just stand there, with a rider on their back, waiting patiently for their turn. And then, everything becomes motion when they enter the arena.

We're doing this on the cheap. There's a lot of money to be spent here. The gear alone can be a small fortune. Everything Suede has is second-hand. Maybe next year Victoria will be on Suede in a horse show in the arena in Redwood. What a strange thing for a girl in her late 50's to be doing.

Me? No way.

Did you see the sunset tonight? The air was smoky and hazy all day. The moon is out there too.

The height of summer in the Bay Area comes in late September. High fire danger. Dry winds blowing west off the land. A period of a couple of weeks while the wind patterns re-adjust for the Fall. Makes for interesting sunsets.

Just uploaded the 200th image to my photo blog. And there are still more to go. This picture was taken in June, 1981, on the U.C. Berkeley Campus.

For a long time I have not said what I believed, nor do I ever believe
what I say, and if indeed sometimes I do happen to tell the truth,
I hide it among so many lies that it is hard to find.
Niccolo Machiavelli, May 17, 1521

Well, now there are TWO really usable web-based news feed readers, bloglines.com and Google Reader.

They're quite similar, and it's easy to move from one to the other. I just exported my list of RSS feeds to a local file and uploaded it into Google Reader. And you can share your feeds with others, just like Bloglines. And both have a "subscribe" link that you can add to your Firefox bookmarks for quickly adding a currently viewed website to your list of news feeds.

I'm going to use BOTH for awhile and see which one wins. The neat thing about Google Reader is that you can add a newsfeed summary from the Reader to your Google desktop, which has become my home page for months now.

Google IS doing some truly amazing things lately.

My friend Leonard Pitt has found a new way to market his book.