Betsey Biggs: Noise to the Process

Flux Quartet Tonight 5/1 in Princeton, 8pm

Flux Quartet plus singers Emily Eagen, Wonjung Kim and Abigail Fischer
Playing my piece "Fragments and Rumors"
plus pieces by Lisa Coons, Anne Hege, Sean McClowry and John Supko.
May 1, 2007, 8pm
Taplin Auditorium, Princeton University
Directions: http://www.princeton.edu/~sda/taplin.html
Free!

The Flux Quartet will perform my piece "Fragments and Rumors" with singers Emily Eagen, Wonjung Kim and Abigail Fischer. This piece explores fragments of poems by the ancient Greek poet Sappho, and was inspired by Hildegard von Bingen, Meredith Monk and girl groups of the sixties. The concert will also include pieces by Lisa Coons, Anne Hege, Sean McClowry, and a piece for large ensemble by John Supko. It should be cool, so if you're around come check it out!

Steve Reich @ 70: Image and Sound

On Tuesday night I went to the Steve Reich@70 celebration at BAM. Two dance pieces were performed to his music -- Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Fase and Akram Khan's Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings, with an intermission in between. The two halves were quite different from one another -- both music and dance.

I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass

Wow, Yo La Tengo's new album rocks. And it has a great title too! YLT gleefully deconstructs krautrock on the blissfully noisy opening track, Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind, and the great Charlie-Brown style R&B track, Hey Mr. Tough, has been stuck on repeat on my CD player all week.

Thanks to my old pal David for the heads up! I wish I could have caught their show last week.

Where is the Mirror and Where is the Dust?

I've taken my copy of John Cage's Silence down off the shelves, prompted by an awfully good class I'm sitting in on taught by Amy Beal at Princeton.

Pardon my Absence

It's rather embarrassing to begin a blog and then not post to it. Apologies. I have been caught up with the beginning of the school term and assorted deadlines. I have taken a lot of notes, though, and a flurry of posts should ensue in the next couple of days.

Slow preparation, fast execution.

Today's Oblique Strategy. Is this a hint?

Lots Going On

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Under Scan Portraits (2005)

I barely have time to write this, and will do more of a discussion and wrap-up after the weekend is over, but I wanted to mention some interesting things that are going on this weekend and beyond.

Mary Davis Upton, 1942-2006

My aunt, Mary Upton, passed away last weekend. She was smart as a whip and funny as hell. Without a college degree, she managed to become the dean of students at Harvard Law School. You could always count on Mary for a well-pointed observation and a laugh. For the last decade or more of her life she lived by the ocean in her beloved Rhode Island. Maresy, we will miss you.

The End of Irony?

I can't help but remember how there was all this discussion back then about "the end of irony" and the meaningfulness of the arts. What happened to that? I just re-read Alex Ross's essay following 9/11, about the meaningfulness that music had in the intensity of that time, on his blog, The Rest Is Noise..

Five Years Ago

Update: free Bargemusic concert info at bottom

Five years ago feels like a long time ago now. Five years also feels like yesterday. I don't really know what to write about 9/11, but I feel I should commemorate it here because it weighs on my heart. I was in Udaipur, India during 9/11, not all that far from the Pakistani border. I moved to New York a month later. Now when I peer at the skyline, my memory searches for the outlines of the towers, although I feel that more and more I can't remember exactly where they were.

Artist Fynnegan Sloyan can help you to remember. His project, WTC Outline, is a memorial project for the World Trade Center.