All posts by Jay

Musician, aesthete, lover of concord.
Brilliant, Ethical, Technical, togetherness

50 people, one question

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A beautiful video. If you haven’t watched it, then please do before you read on.

The thing that struck me was the pacing of the video. We don’t hear the question until almost three minutes in. When we do, we then don’t hear the people’s answers immediately. There is nothing immediate about this video, although there are moments of quick revelation that catch the breath and brim the eye. I was so moved as I watched the faces of those interviewed as they ingested the question; the surge of emotion as they think about it is heartbreaking.

It occurs to me that the power of this video is in the connection we viewers feel with the subjects. Seeing the question break across the minds of one person, then another, then another, we are given time to really let it sink into our own minds. Each one of these individual vox pops would have been over in a couple of minutes. It is the skilled direction that makes this art. Art is about framing something, throwing something into relief, casting light on something and saying “hey, look at this”. For me, the crux of the video is that portion where they think. The answers are interesting, but it is the nameless regrets that the film touches in its subjects—among whom we, of course, are numbered—that makes this a brilliant study.

Brilliant, composers, lovely performances, Technical

Cuban Landscape with Rain

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A beautiful performance of Leo Brouwer’s ‘Cuban Landscape with Rain’ by Dublin Guitar Quartet. I came across Leo Brouwer’s work while helping catalogue guitar music at The Victorian Music Library in Melbourne in November. One afternoon I popped out for lunch to a lovely charcoal chicken place and, as I ate, the heavens opened and spewed forth rain such as I’ve never seen before. Then, as swiftly as it had begun, it was over. Listen out for the portrayal of rain in this beautiful piece.

beautiful minds, Brilliant

Brilliant

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I’m starting a new set of categories for things that are ‘brilliant’. I thought about doing this after Susan Daly tweeted about Roddy Doyle’s short story of the same name (commissioned for this year’s St Patrick’s Day Festival). It’s a great wee story—have a read of it.

She reckoned it’d be a good way of sorting through life—things are either ‘brilliant’ or ‘not brilliant’. A rather pleasing dichotomy, I hope you’ll agree.

I thought more about the idea and decided that brilliance could be sub-divided into the following categories:

  • the Technically Brilliant
  • the Intellectually Brilliant
  • the Ethically Brilliant

I will blog again about what I mean by those but for now I just wanted to get them up on the site so I could demonstrate what I mean by them. (And the blog post I’d started got swallowed in an iPod app upgrade.)

I had a category called ‘beautiful minds’ that I used for things of this ilk before; this’ll bookend with that.

 

beautiful minds, forthcoming events, links

DADGAD, feminism & being artistic

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These links are unconnected. But everything’s connected, right? Well, what connects them is that I found them all yesterday and I think they’re all worth sharing.

There is a connection between Sam West’s passionate speech at last week’s ‘March for the Alternative’ (he’s the son of Timothy West and Prunella Scales) and Austin Kleon’s empowering artistic manifesto, ‘How To Steal Like An Artist’. Kleon’s piece will rock your world if you want to create something—read and share.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/21650433]

I found Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency video blogs via a competition the British Film Institute is running for women who are aspiring to write about film. Start with this one about ‘The Bechdel Test’. I was challenged and enlightened.

Finally, if you’re looking for something to do with your eight precious hours of leisure time, why not go along to ‘An Introduction to DADGAD Guitar‘, taught by Sarah McQuaid, in Walton’s New School of Music on Thursday 7 April? DADGAD is the onomatopoeic word used to denote a system of guitar tuning that is much used by traditional musicians. It is a beautiful sound—jangly and resonant—and it’s easy to pick out pleasing passages, even if you’re a beginner. (It actually helps to be a beginner, as you aren’t ‘stuck’ in thinking of the fretboard in a certain way.) Sarah McQuaid literally wrote the book on this, so she’s the one to give you a great start.

Enjoy!

beautiful minds, links

New albums!!

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I hope record stores never disappear, just like I hope books never become extinct. I got a voucher to spend in Liffey Valley shopping centre from my in-laws for my birthday. It’s so long since I bought a CD, so that was my single aim when I arrived at the centre the day after my birthday. (Vouchers are always better spent as soon as possible. Apart from the fact that stores make a lot of money from unspent vouchers, there’s little more depressing than finding an expired voucher. Well, that’s not true, but it’s pretty frustrating…)

I hovered over Elbow’s new album, but it’s still selling for top dollar. Looking forward to hearing it, though. Still remember first listening to ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ while reading the lyrics in the beautifully illustrated album booklet PDF thing.

I wandered over to the jazz section and thought about getting Kurt Elling’s latest album ‘The Gate’. He’s someone I’m really intrigued by, although I don’t have any of his albums. Still, too expensive—I’ll get it on iTunes.

I keep a note of music recommendations and stuff I want to hear in a Google tasklist. Most of it’s from people I follow on Twitter; a track rated here, an album raved about there. A lot of it’s classical (including lots of recommendations from @WrenAmok).

My three choices were:

  • ‘My Dark Twisted Fantasy’ – Kanye West
  • ‘Teen Dream’ – Beach House
  • ‘The Suburbs’ – Arcade Fire

So far I’ve listened to Kanye’s album in the car once and, as I write this, I’m listening to it again through my nice Bose headphones. One thing I’m noticing is that I’m not really listening at all this time because I’m writing… I used to think I could have music in the background while I worked, but now I realise that I cannot attend to both at the same time. You know those brain scans that show how your brain lights up when it’s ‘on’ music? Yeah, that means you can’t do much else while still even pretending to listen to it. Driving is eminently possible, maybe because it’s largely visual…dunno… I think it’s one reason why it’s going to be *very* difficult to persuade folks to abandon motorised vehicles as their primary transport. Things sound good on car stereos these days.

click through to an interesting article...

Anyway, Kanye’s album is staggeringly good and a real piece of artistry. You all know this, of course, because it’s been out for ages 🙂

I’m loving Beach House, too. Fascinating to learn that it’s just two people. Very inspiring.

Haven’t listened to Arcade Fire yet at all.

what I'm up to

But the serpent said…

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This is the Old Testament reading for the first Sunday in Lent (Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7), which I read this morning at St Ann’s. It’s the story of the first sin and features the wonderful serpent character, who convinces the woman to disobey God. It occurred to me that it’s quite rare that we get the voice of the ‘bad guy’ in the Bible, in this case the deceitful snake. Another good example is the New Testament reading for today (every Sunday in the Catholic/Anglican church calendar has prescribed readings), Jesus’ temptation in the desert.

composers, lovely performances, New Dublin Voices and other choral singing, reviews and reports, what I'm up to

I *Was* Glad…

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Today I sang Hubert Parry’s anthem, ‘I Was Glad’, with St Ann’s choir for a service to mark the commencement of the newly-elected Irish parliament (Dáil Éireann). Parry was born in 1848, an explosive year in Europe, not least in Ireland. He died in 1918, just a few months before the first Irish parliament convened.

This paragraph, from the Wikipedia article on Parry, is a bleak reminder of the cost of freedom:

In the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: “During the war he watched a life’s work of progress and education being wiped away as the male population—particularly the new fertile generation of composing talent—of the Royal College dwindled.”

‘I Was Glad’ is justifiably one of Parry’s best known works, and was written for the coronation of Edward VII, revised for that of George V, and performed again at Elizabeth II’s crowning ceremony. (An upside to the abdication debacle—for Parry, at least—must have been the opportunity to hear his work performed at two coronations!). It’s a great piece and brilliantly written. Listen to the lovely word setting of the central section (“O pray for the peace of Jerusalem…”) and the wonderfully expansive climax on the word ‘plenteousness’ at the end.

(PS this isn’t us—it’s St Paul’s in London on the Queen’s golden jubilee)

Today is Ash Wednesday, so it didn’t go unnoticed among the choir that ‘I Was Glad’ is rather a joyous piece for the first day of Lent. Quick as a flash, one of our number, a Finnish girl called Tuula, said, “Well, it is past tense: ‘I Was Glad’…”.