It is probably appropriate that just as I start typing here and how, the family downstairs have begun their day-long piano practicing. Because these people gutted their pre-war apartment to the studs and replaced all that thick plaster and lathe with a single layer of sheetrock, it always sounds as if these people are all playing in the very next room. Though they have been playing the same exercises for the past three years -- and not really improving, at all -- I will take the coincidence as auspicious.
Blogs have missions and blogs have beats -- OBAMB (note to self: the second "b" is silent) has both. The beat will be music -- in particular, music I like. For the past thirty-five years, I have been writing (more often than not professionally) about music and musicians. During that time, I have written about Igor Stravinsky and Inti Illemani, Ingram Marshall and Johann Sebastian Bach. I've done radio stories about handbell ringers and open mics. Along with several hundred sets of CD liner notes -- primarily for classical releases -- I have been writing recently for the public radio series, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and served as co-host for the webcast of the Whitney Museum's 70th birthday concert tribute to Steve Reich back in '06.
How to describe the mission, though? I've always been intrigued by the idea that music has function -- not so much in the mechanical sense of the cog-and-gearwheel, but rather, that music has purpose. Or, to put it in the jingo of post-Rick-Warren America, music is purposeful. My job as a writer about music is to try and figure out the purpose of the music at hand, whatever it may be.
So, where to begin? I'm thinking Harry Nilsson's proclivity for making things up as he went along in the studio. The starting point was a 1979 interview I did with him when I was a graduate student in Los Angeles.
Welcome! Come on down any time.
No comments:
Post a Comment