Classical Convert

WANT

I want a pair of these guys:

Or perhaps I want an ENTIRE ORCHESTRA of them.

Tags: musical sculpture

Repinionation

Some pieces of music go through climactic restructurings in appreciability as time passes. When first starting out in classical music, I was lead up and in via the Saint-Saens piano concerto number two. It was the first movement of that piece which suddenly, surprisingly presented itself open to me. Before too many cycles of listening and slapping the skip-back button on the stereo, the third movement also revealed itself in a tantalizingly delicious (yeah, I know that’s a little weird of a choice of words but my head is a bit sleep fuzzy) light.

However, the 2nd movement sounded frickin’ dumb.

Even after I had worked my way through the entire set of all 5 SS piano concertos I disliked that 2nd movement. It sounded like a bunch of pixies having a tea party and giggling about cupcakes or something. I remember coming across a comment (during my frequent googlings for people’s opinions on all the newly discovered music) by someone who stated that although they previously hated that movement, they had grown to love it. I also remember being pretty sure that probably was not going to personally be the case.

You can probably already be sure of what is getting written here next: I have grown to enjoy that movement.

Here it is (post initial mumblings):

Ones perceptions taking such a u-turn can be quite a shock to the past and future yous. It doesn’t sound like pixies anymore. Well, almost entirely not. Often the things which initially sounded so appealing fade away, and the previously faded things move into the focus. The depth of field pendulums.

And then again, some things are perennially the epitome of genius:

Tags: classical music, kinky boots, saint-saens

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog

Back from Woodstock this afternoon. Tired, and overloaded with food, alcohol and science. It was our lab ‘retreat’ if you haven’t been following the recent bitching. It actually turned out to be a far funner experience than the prep lead us to believe, despite the 8:30am rising and ten hours of daily science presentations. We still found time to grill and booze and play Wii way into the early-hours, and I fulfilled one of minor life goals of giving a science talk with a beer in hand (and six in the stomach)!

However, we all wish it was not Monday tomorrow. I doubt the lab will see much action until about midday.

Tags: lab retreat, woodstock

Hot Pre-Retreat Thursday Type Linkage

Well, my presentations are sort of done and I am half packed. And we are leaving tomorrow morning. Clearly this is an excellent time to be blogging! I dunno how internetty it will be out in the Catskills, so there might not be anything new up here until Sunday. In the meanwhile, get your teeth into the following morsels:

• There’s a piece in the Guardian about what makes a good riff (From Beethoven to Deep Purple) which seems particularly relevant given the comments in one recent post.
• Also related to that post (the bit about classical music relying on scores whereas pop/rock relies on performances) is this story about a band called Deerhoof deciding to “leak” the sheet music in advance of the actual recording. The video is kind of annoying, but the idea is kind of interesting.
• Speaking of Deerhoof, NPR has a stream in which a performance of theirs was paired with “The Rite Of Spring Remixed” by the Metropolis Ensemble. The concept behind this Rite of Springing is that the sound from a live orchestra is altered in real-time via laptops. Although I think the idea is really neat, I have to admit that on the whole the sound seems a bit too spiky and unbalanced. There are some stand-out moments though (like around 8:40-9:30, and 18:00ish). You can listen to a stream of it on NPR here.
• The Chicago Sinfonietta are doing a concert-by-vote. What if everyone writes in 4′33″ and the helicopter quartet?

See write/you all again soon…!

Tags: chicago sinfonietta, deerhoof, metropolis ensemble, rite of spring remixed

An Example Of Why I Don’t Get Enough Done At Work

This week, I am mostly preparing for our lab “retreat”. This is deservedly inserted between quotation marks, as along the way the retreat concept has morphed from something fairly enjoyable into something fairly terrifying. We are all required to perform multiple presentations on topics which we are entirely unfamiliar with. Starting at 8:30am and finishing at 9:00pm. All weekend.

One of my assigned topics is “Cohesins” which are the proteins that stick your DNA together when your cells divide, so that the copied DNA can be properly distributed between the new cells. Being a good boy (temporarily) I pored over the aneuploidy page on wikipedia. Aneuploidy is what happens when the division gets screwed up and the DNA isn’t divided equally between the two new cells, leading to genetic disorders like Down’s syndrome in which cells have an extra chromosome.

I ended up clicking through the various genetic diseases, getting more and more depressed about how easy it is for the body to accidentally mess itself up. This lead to the discovery of the disorder entitled blue-diaper syndrome, in which a genetic malfunction causes the body to have problems metabolizing the amino acid called tryptophan. This ends up instead being degraded by bacteria in the intestine, which produces a chemical called indole, itself a precursor to indigo dye, staining diapers blue.

I didn’t realize that indigo was a very specific chemical, and so this lead to a very detailed reading of the page on indigo dye, and further to the following company which sells woad seeds. It is now my desire to grow woad in my garden plot next year, extract indigo dye, stain some cloth and sew a wall hanging with the chemical formula for indigo on it:

And then I realized that I’d spent half an hour researching and planning this instead of finishing my presentation.

Tags: cell division, cohesin, indigo