Archive for the 'music' Category

Good Company

by
Clifford
on May 8, 2008
in Los Angeles, astronomy, cosmology, music and personal
. 3 Comments

Brian May. Photo from: http://www.guitar-poll.com/BM.phpHey, guess who was at Griffith Observatory recently? Brian May! He’s that astrophysicist who took some time off to play (excellent) guitar and compose songs in the band called Queen. Ring any bells? (I found the nice photo here.) So why was he in town? Well, a slightly giggly (but always great) Madeline Brand (of the NPR program “Day To Day”) went along to interview him, and you can listen to the interview here, and read a transcript, as well as see extracts from him book (written with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott), charmingly and blatantly (but knowingly?) unrealistically called “Bang! The Complete History of the Universe”. I actually looked through it in a bookstore the other day - looks rather nice. Wonderfully produced and I read some well-written passages, so might be worth picking up if you’re looking for a fresh read about the universe.

As a side note, I was a huge fan of his during my middle to late teenage years and Continue reading ‘Good Company’

A Musical Interlude

by
Clifford
on March 2, 2008
in music and personal
. 5 Comments

Stephon Alexander with saxophone

Cosmologist Stephon Alexander, with saxophone.

A snapshot from last Friday night (a week ago). There was no organized meal from the conference that night, and so people were left to their own devices to explore the chilly embrace of Washington DC. With the group of people that I was with, music emerged after dinner. Here is cosmologist Stephon Alexander (some of you may know him from his blogging days as part of the Quantum Diaries project.) with his saxophone. He’s in the middle of explaining tritone substitutions to two young Continue reading ‘A Musical Interlude’

Energized

by
Clifford
on February 24, 2008
in Los Angeles, music and personal
. 7 Comments

nicholas payton

Nicholas Payton came to town last Wednesday. For me, this means drop everything and go and hear him play. Two happy coincidences took place as well, contributing to making it a bit more special. The first was that my friend and colleague from UBC, Moshe Rozali (who sometimes comments here on the blog) was visiting to give a seminar that day. As I’ve been discovering (as a result of this blog more than anything else) we are very much in the same place when it comes to music, books and many things, and so it was just fantastic to be able to take him along. The second was that my friend of many years, cosmologist Marc Kamionkowski, got in touch just on the off-chance by email (I’d not seen him in many months) to ask if I knew if there was any good jazz coming to town! Marc and I have shared our love of Jazz for about 16 years now, going back to our days of meeting up in New York together at various Jazz clubs. So the three of us sat there and enjoyed the concert together. It was at the Jazz Bakery (to which you’ve possibly read me refer here before), and since I’ve not been there in a while, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they’ve replaced the plastic picnic chairs with some more comfortable padded ones. Quite an improvement.

Payton was joined by four excellent musicians, who were just great too: Russell Continue reading ‘Energized’

Nick Halmagyi: Why I do Science

by
Clifford
on February 19, 2008
in music, personal, science and string theory
. 4 Comments

Nick HalmagyiI’m pleased to introduce a guest blogger today. It’s Nick Halmagyi, who you might have seen comment here from time to time. Nick is a postdoctoral researcher in Theoretical Physics, currently at the Enrico Fermi Institute in Chicago. Before that, he was a graduate student in our High Energy Physics group at USC, which is where I met him. Nick wrote his reflections below for Seed, and he reproduces a version of it (with permission - see details below*) here. I hope you enjoy it.

-cvj

___________________________________________________________________________________

Theoretical physics is a tough subject. Just one example of how hard things can get is when you ramp up the energy density of a system, the physics used to describe the system itself starts to change. At first it may be a small tweak in the parameters that appear in the equations (the electric charge for example), but then there can be large, abrupt transitions.

The biggest system we study is the universe, and immediately after the big bang all of its energy occupied a tiny region of space. Back then, the energy density was enormous, and as the universe grew over time it underwent several transitions before it became what we now observe.

I’m a theoretical physicist, in part, because I relish the challenge of studying the entire Continue reading ‘Nick Halmagyi: Why I do Science’

Friday Night Wanderings

by
Clifford
on February 9, 2008
in Los Angeles, music, personal and work
. 10 Comments

It was one of those Friday nights when I was in the mood to get out of the house, but not entirely sure what to get out to. “Out” was more important than “where”, you see. Wanted to do a bit of thinking and to relax and let the heavy week of too many meetings fall away from my shoulders.

In the end, I did a combination of things. After my mood, followed by my at charlie o’s. John Beasley, Nolan Shaheed, Dave Carpenter, Roy McCurdytrajectory, turned away from Pasadena (where I was planning to see Persepolis, as was my original plan - I’ll do it later… really want to see that film) at about 10:30pm I arrived in the Valley and hung out at Charlie O’s which is one of the more happening of the neighbourhoody jazz clubs in LA. (Sadly, in this context, “happening” by LA late night standards means that there’s more than about nine people present.)

There’s always something on each night and you can just walk in and sit at the bar to Continue reading ‘Friday Night Wanderings’

Oliver Sacks on Music

by
Clifford
on January 31, 2008
in music and science
. 4 Comments

Oliver Sacks must have a new book out or something*. I’ve heard him twice in as many days in radio pieces, and that usually means only one thing. He’s always an interesting interviewee, and this time the focus is on music. The first piece I heard was one of those amusingly produced pieces by Robert Krulwich, on NPR’s Morning Edition. It was all about people who essentially hallucinate music - it spontaneously appears in their ears and there’s often nothing they can do about it. The audio for the piece can be heard here. It was quite a good piece and I recommend it.

The next thing I heard was on the BBC World Service (my usual late night listening) the segment called “The Interview”. This is a much longer piece, talking about the role of Continue reading ‘Oliver Sacks on Music’

Unexpected Music

by
Clifford
on January 2, 2008
in Los Angeles, music and personal
. 3 Comments

baby z rocks and rollsI’ll admit that I was quite surprised by this. First, let me say that this is not one of those tedious “ooooh, isn’t he special” stories. It’s just interesting.

I sat my nephew Baby Z at my digital piano, switched it on, and stepped back. Sure, he found it interesting, as you’d expect, and he started to bang on the keys quite randomly at first…. but he began to experiment quite interestingly, listening, tinkering, trying new things, and singing along to some of his creations… his stuff sounded just great too! I’d never have guessed it would sound so interesting.

How come nobody told me that babies make such excellent avant-garde music seemingly without trying? Fascinating. Why is nobody releasing albums of this stuff?

-cvj

Christmas - Birth and Death - Oscar Peterson

by
Clifford
on December 25, 2007
in music
. 4 Comments

Well, somewhere in the Holiday Season comes Christmas, and somewhere in there is some celebration of a new life. On the other hand, the great pianist Oscar Peterson died the day before Christmas Eve. (See an AP story/obituary here, for example.) At about 6:00pm on Christmas Eve, I usually pronounce it time to have the first strong drink of the evening, and declare Christmas as having begun (defying everyone else who seem to want to start it earlier every year) by playing Carols, and other relevant music, the Christmas tree having been erected. It was again so this year, and I dug out my only “Christmas CD” and put it on. The first track was - of course - the excellent version of Thad Jones’ “A Child is Born” , by Oscar Peterson. In order to share this with you, I thought I’d see if perhaps the man himself might be playing it somewhere on YouTube, but was unable to find it. However, someone else was playing the piece, styling it after and reproducing Oscar Peterson’s famous version, and so I give you - with warm wishes for Christmas and the New Year - “A Child is Born”, Oscar Peterson’s version, channeled through the playing of an unknown (to me) pianist. (Hang on for some actual Peterson in a mo’):



Oscar Peterson was simply amazing, and (especially, for me, as an accompanist to several singers I love) he brought me a huge amount of musical joy, and it is sad to Continue reading ‘Christmas - Birth and Death - Oscar Peterson’

Categorically Not! - Beginnings

by
Clifford
on December 14, 2007
in Los Angeles, art, astronomy, cosmology, music, religion and science
. 0 Comments

Bob Miller at Categorically Not!The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday December 16th (upcoming). The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series - started and run by science writer K. C. Cole - of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area.

Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (Above right: The artist Bob Miller speaking at the event entitled “Really?” on 23rd April, 2006. He died recently on Oct. 28th 2007, and this week’s event is dedicated to him.)

The theme this month is Beginnings. Here’s the description from K C Cole:

Every thing (and every body) began sometime. Even matter, space and time have a history. So do music, religion and galaxies (and along with them, musicians, religious scholars and astronomers.) Of course, how things begin determines to a large extent how they evolve and go on to influence both human culture and the universe at large. So for this month’s Categorically Not, we’ll look at beginnings from three widely (and somewhat wildly) diverse perspectives.

categorically not! Beginnings Speakers
Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Beginnings’

The DAMTP

by
Clifford
on November 19, 2007
in fun and music
. 3 Comments

Since everything seems to be degenerating all too rapidly into holiday mood (giant Santas and huge batteries of lights and so forth have started appearing in my neighbourhood1 … students are leaving early to go home for Thanksgiving…which is this Thursday, by the way), this year I’ve decided to give in rather than resist. So my first holiday act of the year was to let my class know this morning that I won’t hold a Wednesday class after all. They must agree to do the homework and other practice I assign, and to use that hour (when it comes) to curl up with and start a new novel of their choosing2. My second holiday act is to get everyone singing. Yes. Singing.

What shall we sing?

Well, Oliver Rosten has written a song that’s quite appropriate, since it is related to physics and mathematics, in a way. It’s about an aspect of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, so I’ll be listening out for especially enthusiastic singing from you readers over there (you know who you are), ok?!

I’ll steal the words from his site by way of explanation, followed by the song itself. The tune should be familiar to many. Let me/him know what you think in the comments (be sure to close your office door the first time around until you get the rhythm right):

Continue reading ‘The DAMTP’

’T Ain’t Natural

by
Clifford
on October 27, 2007
in Los Angeles, fun, music, science and society and television
. 3 Comments

Josh Ritter ConcertThe photos record scenes from an excellent use of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum’s large exhibition halls after hours: Live music. (They’re not super-great - I only had my phone with me.)

A friend took me as a guest to a filming of Josh Ritter and his band for a TV show. Lots of Lovely Bones everywhere*, stuffed animals, loud (but not too loud) good music (I’d not really listened to Ritter before - hey, not bad at all), and free martinis on tap (surprisingly not watered down!) from Grey Goose. How could I not go?

(You can see the exhibit hall (North American Mammals, I think) with the activity in the distance between the bones of Mr/Ms Triceratops here.)

If you’ve never been the the Natural History Museum here before and you are in LA, please go along. It’s really very good indeed. As an incentive, you can go to the new spider pavillion and wander around with live spiders everywhere. (What’s that? That’s not an incentive? I see…Well, there’s lots to see besides rubbing shoulders with spiders, from dinosaurs, mammals and birds to wonderful gemstones and minerals…) I’m thinking of going to check it out some time, and maybe report back here on the blog about it some time.

Josh Ritter Concert

This event is sort of typical of LA, in both good and bad ways. There are all these Continue reading ‘’T Ain’t Natural’

Campus Chords

by
Clifford
on October 16, 2007
in Los Angeles, movies and music
. 10 Comments

[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

I just got back from a real treat* on the USC campus this afternoon:

John Williams and USC Thornton School of Music players

Know who that is on the podium? (Click for larger view.)

Continue reading ‘Campus Chords’

Blue Monk, Birthday Monk

by
Clifford
on October 10, 2007
in music
. 1 Comment

Hey, it’s also the 90th birthday of Thelonius Monk, one of my favourite musicians for sheer character, originality, electricity and overall brilliance. I noted the day not because I have committed to memory the birthdays of my favourite musicians (I barely remember mine each year) but because there was a nice NPR piece on him just now. Have a listen if you like (here).

I’m going to celebrate with a treat. Wall to wall Monk on my iTunes for the next couple of hours while I work, and here on the blog, two of my favourite videos of Monk in action playing the wonderful “Blue Monk”. The first one (look who’s watching on while he plays!) is shorter, sparser, and is sort of cooler (in a way I can’t define - his movements have a lot to do with it) while the second one is longer, denser, (it has other soloists) but has more in the way of fascinating harmonies popping out from under his fingers, along with more of his unusual and highly effective percussive playing style. Note by the way that the first is from the amazing 1957 video/film recording “The Sound of Jazz” that has so many musical giants playing and walking around the studio that it’s almost overwhelming. Get it if you want a simply sublime musical experience. (You can find clips on YouTube, like this one of Billie Holiday (surrounded by other greats on sax, trumpet, trombone…), which brings me to tears of both joy and sadness every time.)

Ok… the Monk recordings follow. Enjoy… Watch the feet! I love the feet!

Continue reading ‘Blue Monk, Birthday Monk’

Categorically Not! - Small Differences

by
Clifford
on October 6, 2007
in Los Angeles, film, music, science and science education
. 2 Comments

Edward Murray on Harpsichord at Categorically Not!The next Categorically Not! is Sunday October 7th. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series - started and run by science writer K. C. Cole - of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area.

Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (Above right: Edward Murray performing on the harpsichord, in the event with the theme “Strings”.)

The theme this month is Small Differences Here’s the description from K C Cole:

Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Small Differences’

MacArthur Mashup

by
Clifford
on September 25, 2007
in academia, art, literature, music, science and words
. 12 Comments

The MacArthur Fellowships were announced today. These are particularly great, as it’s awarded across so many different fields, and I always learn about interesting work going on by reading the synopses at the website. Congratulations to all recipients!! Before I point to the list, I’d like to make a plea that will, of course, go unheeded.

Please please, people of the media, stop calling them “genius grants”. Just stop. By way of explanation, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the term just seems to strike the wrong tone about what these things should be about. It seems to me to push the recipients away as being “other” rather than encouraging us all to embrace the qualities that they are being encouraged to show by getting the fellowships. Ok, that’s the end of my plea.

Here’s a reminder of what the Fellowship is about (extract from their site):

Continue reading ‘MacArthur Mashup’

Funky Hideaway

by
Clifford
on September 5, 2007
in Los Angeles, music and personal
. 0 Comments

lost souls cafeI love downtown Los Angeles. No two ways about it. It’s rapidly getting better, as you may have heard, and there are so many interesting things to find down there. I hope to do a report sometime on an extended walkabout I did down there last month, but that’s for another time. It is also great to cycle around, as I do quite a lot.

Today, still in the heatwave, I left campus to go and hide downtown, first stopping by the excellent Grand Central Market for a bit of shopping for ingredients for a special dish I am going to prepare for a Salon-style gathering at some friends’ on Saturday. More on that later. Then I went to work in one of my favourite cafes in the city. I shouldn’t give away my hideouts, but there’s only you and me reading, right?

It’s the Lost Souls Cafe, hidden down an alleyway (Harlem Place Alley) off fourth street between Spring and Main. Perfect for the subway at Pershing Square, and one of the few non-bar type places open until 10:00pm downtown. (Wish it would go until 1:00am or so.)

It’s a fantastic place, as you can see from their website, but relatively few people that Continue reading ‘Funky Hideaway’

Lookin’ For Some Hot Stuff

by
Clifford
on September 1, 2007
in black holes, books, music, research, science and string theory
. 8 Comments

___________________________________________________________________________________
Hot, hot, hot, hot stuff
hot, hot, hot
hot, hot, hot, hot stuff
hot, hot, hot

- from “Hot Stuff”, by Donna Summer (1979). I refer to not only the physics but the c. 100 oF temperatures we’ve been having here every day recently.
___________________________________________________________________________________

On my way back from the conference, I spotted this book (below left) last Saturday in Foyles (the booksellers) in London1. Quark Gluon Plasma book It is a collection of reprints of a lot of the papers forming the foundations of the physics of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) idea, going back the early to mid 1970s with such papers as Collins and Perry (Gosh, I had no idea Malcolm was one of the early workers on this idea. He’s much more thought of as associated with black holes, gravity, strings and so forth, ideas which - ironically - have recently turned out to be relevant to the discussions of the physics too. See my recent post, and there are also various popular articles to be found2).

Putting aside the usual ridiculous price that Springer Elsevier charges for books, I found myself in two minds about this book, in view of the surprises being uncovered about the properties of this remarkable state of matter at the RHIC experiment. Is this collection of early papers a useful working tool, or is it now just of historical interest, since many of the basic expectations about the properties of the plasma seem now to be incorrect?

rhic collision of gold ionsWell, after a bit of thought, I decided that the latter view would be way too hasty. First and foremost, on a general level, even if some of the computations in some papers were done in the “wrong” light (it’s a strongly coupled liquid that flows, not a weakly coupled gas of quarks and gluons), much of their content will still be useful in many ways - good and correct calculations last for all time, it is the sense of the words decorating them that may crumble over time. More specifically, one can worry about whether there were assumptions (and approximations based on those) that went into Continue reading ‘Lookin’ For Some Hot Stuff’

Congratulations Brian May!

by
Clifford
on August 23, 2007
in entertainment, music and personal
. 11 Comments

brian may receiving his phd from paul nandraFor what? The story is here. Ok. Full disclosure - I was quite a Brian May fan as a teenager, and as a physicist in training while at Imperial College, London. Now I was going to do a long post about playing electric guitars, building electric guitars (because I was into electronics, physics and music, not because Brian May did it too), analyzing his guitar solos, endless listening to Queen, endless teenage arguing with anyone who would engage about why he was a much better guitarist than [pick the flashy guitarist from some other rock group], probably permanently diminishing my hearing a bit at two huge Queen concerts, and maybe best of all …practicing music with my friends in the same room (it was said) over in Beit Quad that Brian used to use for practice in the days before Queen began! That was quite a thing for me back then. Here’s a little interview with him about his Imperial College days from the IC student newspaper Felix

There would have been pictures of the guitars and so forth, a clever post title playing Continue reading ‘Congratulations Brian May!’

Brass

by
Clifford
on July 31, 2007
in music
. 0 Comments

cooper street brass band

The self-styled Cooper Street Brass Band playing for lots of ice-cream eaters at Continue reading ‘Brass’

Joshua Redman on NPR

by
Clifford
on May 26, 2007
in music
. 0 Comments

joshua redman by michael wilsonThere was a nice piece on NPR (by John Ydstie) featuring Joshua Redman today (photo left by Michael Wilson). He’s one of my favourite of the young (relatively) saxophonists on the Jazz scene today. (Some Wiki info here.) When I was an East coaster I saw him a number of times in concert, and he was always very good indeed. His albums are very good too - fun and full of personality, very soulful, although not hugely ground-breaking (not that this is always necessary to make a great musician). By the way, Joshua Redman’s music is actually a good starter place for people who might want to start out in Jazz by listening to some Continue reading ‘Joshua Redman on NPR’

Benny Remembers Clifford and Lee

by
Clifford
on May 4, 2007
in music
. 7 Comments

There was a lovely piece on NPR about Benny Golson yesterday. You can hear the article again, and more audio clips that were not aired, by going to the website here.

I’m a big fan of Golson, not just because of his remarkable range of performing and especially compositional work (even if you don’t listen to jazz, you’ll know a lot of his work on lots of television shows such as MASH, Mission Impossible, etc.), but also because without him, the pyrotechnic young trumpeter Lee Morgan might never have teamed up with Art Blakey in the Jazz Messengers (Golson suggested him to Blakey, so the story goes).

People often don’t seem to know much about Jazz trumpeters beyond Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie, so I’m going to digress at this point. There is a line of trumpeters which you should know about, as it forms a huge part of the foundation of pure modern Jazz trumpet playing. Miles and Dizzy, important and influential as they were, form only a medium-sized part of that foundation.

lee morganIf you have not heard of Lee Morgan, please stop what you are doing right now and go out to the store and buy some of his work. This is an emergency! If you want to be totally blown away by the most audacious, powerful and raw trumpet playing you’ll probably ever hear, get (for example) John Coltrane’s 1957 album Blue Trane. Don’t focus on Coltrane for a change (who is of course transcendent)… Listen to Morgan, and remind yourself as you encounter the intense heat and urgency of his Continue reading ‘Benny Remembers Clifford and Lee’

Jazz and Women

by
Clifford
on April 22, 2007
in Los Angeles and music
. 37 Comments

Passing near the Catalina Bar and Grill last night (on my way to the Cat and Fiddle) put me in mind of the Roy Hargrove concert there of a couple of weeks ago (see also here), which in turn put me in mind of a conversation I had a week later during which something slightly disturbing occurred to me. Let me explain. (A clickable picture of Roy Hargrove in action at the concert is below)

roy hargroveI was having dessert over at a friends house after a nice dinner in Pasadena, and three of us were kicking around thoughts, stories, and ideas. The subject of musical likes and dislikes came up - I think because someone put something on the CD player, and one of my friends said that she did not like Jazz. I was not quite sure what she meant by this, and since she’s a friend who I like a respect a lot, I probed further. I tried to ascertain how much she’d actually heard, since I my opinion Jazz is a very large and many-splendoured thing and to say you don’t like it after having heard a little is like trying sweet and sour pork, not liking it, and then deciding that you don’t like Chinese cuisine. I explained this opinion, and having established that she preferred “classical” music, (another large and encompassing term for a huge variety, of course) I tried to explain how she might find a way into Jazz by using that as an entry point.

My point was not that she was wrong to not like Jazz, but that she should keep an open mind about it until she’s given it a fair chance. I explained another key point that might help. It usually becomes clear at a point like this in a conversation of this sort that one of the key problems for the listener is that they’re not aware of a great deal of what is going on in the music, that there are often several layers of interesting Continue reading ‘Jazz and Women’

Saturday Scenes

by
Clifford
on April 14, 2007
in Los Angeles, art, food and drink, music and personal
. 3 Comments

alonys red
(The striking central red piece above is by the artist called Alonys (as are the ones surrounding). You can see more things of hers at her myspace space.)

Well, it’s been a busy week here, and I had tons of things to tell you in about five or six extra posts (beyond the quick ones I did) that never made an appearance. I had several for last weekend too. I ought to start by catching up from there. Here goes a bit of recollection and reflection:

Saturday was interesting since I ended up cramming three different activities into the evening, after a day of gardening and errands (mostly the latter), if I recall correctly.

gatherd crowdThe evening began (as it did the Saturday before) with a trip to an opening at an art gallery. This time it was downtown, near Gallery Row, (it is called Crewest) and it was featuring the work of some up and coming female artists. Overall, I was not overwhelmed with things I thought were great, but the exhibition was not without some interesting pieces on the walls (see above - some of her 3D sculpture-meets-painting works were fun too) and sometimes interesting people milling around. There was even a DJ, but sadly no wine (I’d been spoiled by the last gallery reception, I suppose.)

Continue reading ‘Saturday Scenes’

Cyrus Chestnut Rocks and Rolls

by
Clifford
on April 2, 2007
in Los Angeles and music
. 4 Comments

Sunday night, after a long afternoon of intense work in the garden (digging holes and improving soil for planting new budlea plants, standing on the tall ladder for trimming one of the tall palm trees, and more) I went to the Jazz Bakery to see the second set of pianist Cyrus Chestnut with his trio (Dezron Douglas on bass and Neal Smith on drums):

cyrus chestnut

They were excellent. As usual, there was hardly any audience for this extremely talented pianist (20 of us max?) - the triple whammy of (1) Los Angeles - people just seldom seem to make the effort, in great numbers (2) after 10:00pm in LA - see (1), and (3) Sunday night - see (1) again. The club would have been packed, were this taking place in New York, or London. Anyway, not my loss, I suppose, although it does take away a bit from such an event if the crowd is depleted like that. Musicians often feed off the crowd’s responses. In any case, it was an excellent show, as I said. Unexpectedly, they interspersed various standards with some recently reharmonized Continue reading ‘Cyrus Chestnut Rocks and Rolls’

Categorically Not! - Vulgarization

by
Clifford
on March 20, 2007
in Los Angeles, books, literature, music, science, science and society, science education and science in the media
. 3 Comments

The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 25th March. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series - started and run by science writer K. C. Cole - of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area. There’s a new website showing past and upcoming events here. You can also have a look at some of the descriptions I did of some events in some earlier posts (such as here and here), and the description of some of the recent special ones on Point of View and Uncertainty that I organized with K. C. as USC campus events (here, here (with video) and here).

Here is a description from the poster for the upcoming programme:
Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Vulgarization’

B Flat, but Stay Sharp

by
Clifford
on February 16, 2007
in fun, humour and music
. 14 Comments

b flat key

Bâ™­, C, D, Eâ™­, F, G, A, Bâ™­

There’s something that resonates with me about the B flat scale. I don’t know why. I like the sound and feel of it. A lot of pieces of music are written in it (although I do not know if it is actually the most popular key), incidentally, and so I imagine that others like it a lot too. I wonder why that is? Is it just the result of convention? Is there something about the way we (those who like it a lot) are constructed that fits that frequency rather well?

Consider having a listen to Robert Krulwich’s NPR piece called “Have you heard about B flat?”. It’s got light humour sprinkled around liberally, and some amusing music. And there are a few pieces of information about the (apparent) unreasonable ubiquity of the note B flat in Nature. He tells you about B Flat and alligators, B flat and a staircase, and he ends with B flat and a black hole, and I’ll quote from the website for this one:

Continue reading ‘B Flat, but Stay Sharp’

Waiting for Kenny

by
Clifford
on February 14, 2007
in Los Angeles and music
. 2 Comments

The time: Saturday just past, just before 4:00pm.

The location (wide): The the splendid old May Company building, at Wilshire and Fairfax. It’s now the LACMA West building. (LACMA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Image: Carol M. Highsmith)

Isn’t the building just great? So utterly LA:

may company building

The location (zoom in): The rooftop penthouse of said building. What were we doing? Continue reading ‘Waiting for Kenny’

The Hills Were Alive

by
Clifford
on January 29, 2007
in Los Angeles and music
. 3 Comments

janaki string trioBeverly Hills, that is. The Da Camera Society (a chamber music society I mentioned last year) arranged a concert by the Janaki String Trio in the Beverly Hills Women’s Club. Click the (no-flash, not-while-they-played) photo for a larger version. I’m a Beethoven nut, and so having two of his string trios on the program was excellent. There was also a trio by Shubert that I liked a lot. There were two bonuses however.
Continue reading ‘The Hills Were Alive’

Steve Reich in the Afternoon

by
Clifford
on January 28, 2007
in Los Angeles and music
. 7 Comments

Ok, it’s really the evening - 7:00pm - but I could not resist the post title. Most of you won’t know (let me know if you do) what I’m playing with in the title, but that’s ok. I’m really, really pleased with it.

Amazingly, we have a free concert tomorrow here at USC with an introduction by the composer Steve Reich. Here is the weblink with complete information. Here’s an extract of the heaps of gushing remarks collected together to encourage you to go:

As part of a citywide festival celebrating his 70th birthday, Reich himself introduces a concert of his music played by three USC ensembles.

Widely regarded as one of the major “minimalists,” Steve Reich has composed music with a profound impact on art, film and popular music in the 20th century. He was recently called “…America’s greatest living composer,” (The Village Voice), “…the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker) and “…among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times). From his Continue reading ‘Steve Reich in the Afternoon’

Looking Ahead To Tomorrow

by
Clifford
on January 28, 2007
in academia, biology, music and science
. 6 Comments

Gosh, where do I begin? It’s going to be a hugely busy day on Monday. I’m excited about Monday first and foremost because of the colloquium. Charles (Chuck) Stevens from the Salk Institute generously accepted my invitation to come and visit USC and give a special colloquium to an audience made up of people from both the Physics and Astronomy Department and the Neuroscience Research Institute. This is because his talk is going to be about thing of interest to both camps! He’s applying physicist approaches -the sort that I do- to biological problems. This is a big deal to me because it is very hard to know when problems in biology actually really need or care about the sorts of things that physicists care about. The last thing you need as a biologist… when you’re happily gathering all those juicy data on various systems and finding out all sorts of highly specialized context-dependent mechanisms… the last thing you need is some arrogant physicist coming in an babbling stuff like “symmetry Continue reading ‘Looking Ahead To Tomorrow’

Mathematics and Music

by
Clifford
on January 22, 2007
in mathematics and music
. 8 Comments

On Wednesday there’ll be an evening event about Mathematics and Music here at USC. If you are nearby and can make it, consider going along. It’s free! It is part of the Visions and Voices programme I’ve talked about before. The presenter/performer will be Elaine Chew, whose research is at the intersection of engineering and music. Read more about the event here. You can find out more about Professor Chew from her website here.

Enjoy!

-cvj

Funky Fresh Air

by
Clifford
on December 26, 2006
in music
. 1 Comment

james brown image from concertshots.comOh, man ! Right now I’m seriously jammin’ along to NPR’s Fresh Air. Why? It is a retrospective on James Brown (you’ve heard the news, I imagine). Terry Gross (the show’s presenter) has lined up a 2005 interview with him, and also has cut in interviews with Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker, etc. It’s all about his music’s history - the influences, the influenced, the ideas, the groove, the politics, the movement, the Movement, and so much more.

If you’ve not listened to James Brown’s music before, this is a good chance to learn what it’s all about. (Image right from concertshots.com.)

Whatever you’re doing, Get Up Offa That Thing and download now and get your groove on!

-cvj

Please, Please, Please

by
Clifford
on December 25, 2006
in music
. 4 Comments

…say it isn’t so…

James BrownSad news this Christmas Day. James Brown died this morning. I’ve seen two obituaries up so far, an Associated Press one, and one at the BBC. (Image left from Getty images.) No doubt there’ll be a lot more news and obituaries through the day

He goes from being a Living Legend to …a Legend. He laid the foundations for so very much of the music we hear all around us. Gotta go dig out some of his music and shake myself up!

-cvj

More Uncertainty

by
Clifford
on November 12, 2006
in Los Angeles, academia, architecture, art, music, science and science education
. 1 Comment

walt disney concert hallYou may recall the very successful event called “Uncertainty”, back at the end of August. I blogged about it here and here, among other places.

Well it is time for the second one in the series. Recall that it is part of the Provost’s Visions and Voices series, which has been running since August, with a huge program of events of all sorts.

Here are some words about the event:
Continue reading ‘More Uncertainty’

The Yankovic Singularity

by
Clifford
on October 16, 2006
in black people in science, humour, music and science and society
. 27 Comments

So I actually had no idea that Weird Al Yankovic was still doing his, er, particular brand of music. (Singular, one might say.) I actually thought it stopped a long while ago, not long after the Thriller parodies. Well, not long ago he did a video/song called “White and Nerdy”. I looked at it*, and so can you, on Myspace video (wow, I had no idea they had a video service). Here is the link.

weird Al white and nerdy video

Among the things featured in the video’s visuals are Schrodinger’s equation, Stephen Hawking’s BHOT, M C Escher (It’s a rap video, so…) Here are some stills (click for larger):

weird Al white and nerdy videoweird Al white and nerdy videoweird Al white and nerdy video

I laughed, I’ll admit. I find his fresh-faced and cheerful style quite funny at times. But then I got thinking. I can’t decide whether I should be depressed at the potency of the stereotypes he is playing with, or just carry on giggling. For example, why did the guys who were representing the complete opposite of being nerdy (and into science, reading, and the like) have to be cast as black? Worse than that (or at least equally as Continue reading ‘The Yankovic Singularity’

Queen’s Greatest Hits

by
Clifford
on October 8, 2006
in music and personal
. 5 Comments

No. Not Brian, Freddie, and the boys. Some other time. I’m talking about a different Queen, and different hits. Late Friday night I suddenly got in the mood to go to Amoeba to pick up this music:

asha bhosle album cover

… and I’ve been listening to it exclusively since.

Continue reading ‘Queen’s Greatest Hits’

More Than A Hint Of The Old Days

by
Clifford
on September 9, 2006
in Los Angeles and music
. 8 Comments

Roy HargroveWell, Roy Hargrove was as good as I recall from the last time I saw him, in one of my favourite jazz clubs, the Village Vanguard in New York. In view of other live small club music events I’ve been to in LA, I admit that I was expecting a lackadaiscal and unappreciative audience, probably talking while the musicians dared to interrupt their dinner, and because it was after 10:00pm, hardly any audience for a 10:30pm start of the set.

I was wrong, I am happy to report. I readily revise my earlier conclusions about live jazz in LA by quite a bit. For a moment there, I could well have been in any of a number of good New York Jazz clubs. The venue itself, the Catalina Bar and Grill, was very good indeed (even though they managed to annoy me at the start by (1) only having valet parking, which I avoid, and (2) giving directions that assume that you will be driving, and so only telling you to enter the club through the back via the parking garage, rather than giving you the option to just walk through the lobby at the front. Sigh.) and was cozy and inviting, and apparopriately low-lit. The club was not completely full, but decently so, and the bulk of the audience clearly knew and understood jazz, not just applauding the apparently “difficult bits” Gerald Clayton (as audiences so often do), but with several showing their appreciation of a well chosen phrase, or a humourous or evocative musical reference of some sort, within a larger musical line. And sure, the two-drink minimum, or option to instead order food from the overpriced menu is a clear, cynical money-spinner, but it is no worse than in several other clubs in other cities, so I was only routinely perturbed by this, and for a short time.

Roy Hargrove and his band blew away any such minor concerns. I asked for (and got) Continue reading ‘More Than A Hint Of The Old Days’

And Then Two Come Along At Once….

by
Clifford
on September 8, 2006
in Los Angeles and music
. 1 Comment

Roy HargroveSo I learned earlier this week that one of my favourite young trumpeters, Roy Hargrove is going to be at the Catalina Bar and Grill from Wednesday through this weekend…

James Carter …and -bizarrely enough- one of my favourite young saxophonists, James Carter is going to be at the Jazz Bakery precisely the same dates!

So it is going to be quite a weekend. It’s been a while since I’ve seen either of these guys (not since the Village Vanguard in New York, I think… Happy days.). Of course I must go and see them, for old times sake, and to make some new times….

(Photos by Tony Gieske and Zappan (see here, respectively.))

-cvj

There’s Music Beyond The Standard Model

by
Clifford
on August 10, 2006
in music and science
. 6 Comments

In a rather splendid development, there’s been an arrangement made between the Aspen Center for Physics and the Aspen Music Festival and School, which (you might recall from a post of mine a long time ago) are in close proximity to one another. The result of the arrangement is that -as happened on Wednesday- the President of the ACP went down the corridor clapping his hands outside our offices to remind us that there was a concert down the hall. We all filed into the auditorium and were treated to a recital of a number of pieces of music from three extremely talented young players.

The first one up was 24 year old Alejandro Vela, who played extracts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet (op. 75):

Alejandro Vela

I especially like the fact that nobody cleaned off the board, leaving some snatches of physics from the Phenomenology workshop’s discussions to be seen (hence the meaningless title of this post). Nice backdrop. For what it’s worth, I’ve left a larger version (click on above image) for you to look more closely at the equations at your leisure.

He also played Chopin’s Etude No. 12 in C minor (op. 25). Next up was the 14 year old Peng Peng, who, after playing Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F minor (op 52), played from Rachmaninoff’s Moments Musicaux (op. 16). He was followed by Katherine Peterson (I don’t recall her age, but yeah, she was young too), who played Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (LW G16/2).

peng pengkatherine peterson

Everybody played marvellously. This is a really great idea that is set to be a standard part of the ACP’s Summer program.

I had only two small gripes with Wednesday’s concert. The first is that I’m pretty sure Continue reading ‘There’s Music Beyond The Standard Model’