UCSD Arts Libraries

Short Attention Span Chamber Music Series

The Short Attention Span Chamber Music Series returns to Geisel Library on Wednesday, July 23 at 12:30 p.m. on the main floor near the Seuss Room. Series director Scott Paulson on oboe plays his favorite baroque sonatas with help from David Savage on bassoon and Christian Hertzog on harpsichord.

At this popular series, library musicians and some of their favorite patrons pull sheet music from the library stacks & then the musicians perform live in a cosy, friendly setting. Stick around afterwards and the Arts Library staff will show you how to look up further information about the music.

And there’s more! Here are the dates for upcoming shows:

Wednesday, August 6, 12:30 p.m.
Wind Synthesizer virtuoso Robert Williams plays live in the lobby near the Seuss Room.

Wednesday, August 20, 12:30 p.m.
Short Attention Span All-Stars play selections from their favorite composers in the lobby near the Seuss Room.

Free Public Domain Classical Music Site

Musopen has been around a while, but I just found out about this awesome aspect of it. There is a ton of music and scores available already, but if there is something you’d really like to see or have available you can bid to have it performed and recorded. Seriously! Here’s how it works:

“Decide how much you would be willing to pay for a piece of music to be in the public domain (copyright free). We will combine your donation with others who want the same piece then find a professional to record and donate the work then add it to the website.
Together, all our small donations can be combined to contribute a great deal of new music.

On the left of each bid you will find an icon. Please feel free to embed these widgets on your website or blog to help raise money for the piece you want.”

So awesome!

Sea Organ!

The Pompomist says:

Like the Singing Ringing Tree posted here last month, Sea Organ is an architectural and experimental musical object located in Zadar, Croatia. Is a pipe organ that has a set of 35 musically tuned tubes located underneath a set of large marble steps played by the sea waves. The movement of the sea pushes air through, and depending on the size and force of the wave, it produces a somewhat random but harmonic sound.

Designed by architect Nikola Basic in 2005, who recently received the European Prize for Urban Public Space for this project.
Click here for the YouTube Vid

Concerto for Theremin and Chamber Orchestra

March 10th, 11th and 14th you can see our very own Scott Paulson with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra performing composer Linda Kernohan’s Concerto for Theremin and Chamber Orchestra. Click here to listen to a little and to visit the composers site.
Buy your tickets now, it’s sure to sell out!

RIP Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen, the innovative composer died this week at home in Germany.

Hugely influential to everyone from the Beatles to Frank Zappa, he was also considered very controversial–for instance when he said that the September 11th attacks were “the greatest work of art one can imagine”. Yipes.

“In one of his lager-scale operas, ”Licht,” Stockhausen tried to capture all of the facets of the world with sound and noises and set them in relation to the human spirit, speech, smells and colors.

The piece, which took 25 years to compose, is an enormous sonic representation of the seven days of the week. So large is the work’s scope that multiple scenes needed to depict Thursday alone last four hours.” From the AP piece at NYT.com

Complaint Choir!

Some crazy Finns got together and started thinking about how to harness all the energy people spend complaining into something else..thus was born the Complaint Choir! Many new Complaint Choirs have been started since then, some in the US too, so go here to read more, or here to start one of your own!

Worldscape Laptop Orchestra

The Musical Laptops of York

The concert hall is dark and hushed, as such venues tend to be. Then the orchestra begins to play. First there’s a whirring, then a beep, then a high-pitched squeak. The 50-piece Worldscape Laptop Orchestra has begun its performance at the University of York, in England.

By “piece” the orchestra means laptop computer. Fifty of them, made by Apple, have been gathered by the university’s music department to perform works composed by Ambrose Field, a senior lecturer in the department. They will be streamed live from the university’s Web site later this month, a local newspaper reports. Continue reading Worldscape Laptop Orchestra…

The day the music died

From the BBC, November 2nd, 2007

Internet law professor Michael Geist examines a legal row which could have grave implications for anyone and everyone serving an online audience.

In February 2006, a part-time Canadian music student established a modest, non-commercial website that used collaborative wiki tools, such as those used by Wikipedia, to create an online library of public domain musical scores.

Within a matter of months, the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) featured more than 1,000 musical scores for which the copyright had expired in Canada.

Within two years - without any funding, sponsorship or promotion - the site had become the largest public domain music score library on the internet, generating a million hits per day, featuring over 15,000 scores by over 1,000 composers, and adding 2,000 new scores each month.

In mid-October this year the IMSLP disappeared from the internet. Continue reading The day the music died…