“SA: Was there a specific experience that made you want to become a DJ/Producer?

SH: This may sound so lame, and will also show how long i have listened to this style of music, but when I heard “Heaven’s Scent” by Digweed & Muir (Bedrock) I lost my mind. I think i listened to that track on repeat for nearly 2 months straight. I have wanted to be a musician since i picked up the guitar at 15 years old, but that made me want to learn how to make music for DJs.

SA: What many appreciate about the Wolf + Lamb label is their wide range of music personas, which gives the label as a whole its own unique identity. You’re a healthy addition to this mix of talent, but how did the guys from Wolf + Lamb discover your talent?

SH: I had done a live set to perform (as Addled at the time) for my friends that own More Or Less in Baltimore. My friends Sam Valeniti and Jakub Alexander over at Ghostly International were kind enough to forward this recorded live set to Gadi & Zev. They were looking for local talent, and so we met up at The Marcy and went through my music.

A couple days later Gadi called asking about the stuff I gave him with the name Slow Hands, and that he loved it. I told him that was the moniker I used to produce slower and more live instrumental oriented music . . . we ran with that!”

Click here to read the rest of the interview.

Image in the post is of Cavanagh, from the Murmur DC post.

“In her review of The Black Swan, dance writer Tobi Tobias declares that “mothers with any sense in them will lock up their daughters rather than regale them with this show.” I can see where she’s coming from. If I had a daughter under the age of 20 or so, I wouldn’t want her to see the movie. But, take it from someone who clandestinely watched Dirty Dancing at a neighbor’s house in 1988… if you have a daughter who is at all interested in dance or ballet, she is going to see this film. She will watch it online or sneak out to the theater or go off to camp and someone will have the DVD. Your best bet is to acknowledge this and go ahead and watch it with her so you can have some good discussion about it together. Here are some questions to get you started, especially if you have a dancing daughter…

Natalie Portman lost weight and went on a severe diet for her role in The Black Swan. Do you think this is appropriate? Why or why not?

Do you think it’s possible for ballet to provide an environment that promotes health and wellness? Have you had teachers or mentors who have put forward a different vision of ballet, other than competitive and dangerous to its dancers?

Why do you like to dance?

What would you like me to understand about your involvement in ballet?

What do you think about the mom in the movie? Should she have let her daughter go to the theater, even though it turns out she was right to be worried about her? Where is the line between protective and smothering?

In the movie, Nina has no trouble finding her internal White Swan, but she has a harder time with her Black Swan side. Discuss how this might be overly simplistic, and how every human has a range of different aspects of their personality that they might choose to tap into.

What messages of the movie do you agree with or not agree with, and why? (for example: perfection requires sacrifice.)

Click here to read the entire post, with links.

Image in this post from the movie the Black Swan.

“Erin Petty wrote an article for the City Paper November 18, 2010 titled, Color Theory: Racial Stunt-Casting on D.C. Stages, or Is It Just “Nontraditional?” After reviewing a few examples, she writes, “actors weren’t just cast because they were great for the role, but also because the director had something to say”, and the color of the actor helped the director make the statement. Petty goes on to explore the casting of a black woman in the JonBenet Ramsey role in the Woolly Show House of Gold. In talking about House of Gold with my friend Emily (who attended with me) we discussed how the directors made choices to bring a slight remove from the extreme creepiness, and that the color of Ramsey’s character was one of those things.

The character on stage declaims that she is white, but the audience sees the actor is black. This relieves the viewer: we are in a fiction world – the world of theater. The action of the play is overwhelmingly disturbing, and this affect — stunt-casting, perhaps — actually is what makes the action congestible….”

Click here to read the entire post, which goes on to consider how audience/director preferences are implicated in casting decisions and discrimination. Click here to read the article by Erin Petty which inspired Bettmann’s post. Image in this post is from Petty’s post, and the production House of Gold at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre.

“We take many things in life for granted. An endless supply of essentials seems to surround us. We will never deplete the resources that are necessary for our survival, and we can live our lives knowing that everything is in the black. My car is always on a full tank of gas. My bank account is always ready to accommodate my rent. Starbucks will never run out of freshly brewed coffee. These are a given. The very notion that any of these resources will run out is absurd, because we sit on an endless reserve of everything. This is America where plenty is an entitlement. Don’t ask me about emergency plans because people who speak American don’t have ‘emergency’ in their vocabulary.

But the necessary things never last. I will eventually have to break down and fill my tank. I will have to check my online statement to make sure my balance is roughly where it was last month. There will be that one busy day where the line is out the door and I might have to wait four minutes for a fresh cup. Exhaustion of any or all three of these things will derail a good day. Lack of plenty – that is the one thing Americans refuse to accept. The day a lack of plenty hits America is the day the Earth stops spinning on its axis. (But isn’t there a recession going on? Shhh-shut up!)

Then there are the things I know I can’t live without. Recently I made a discovery that turned my world upside down. I am the kind of music collector who treats his collection like a collection. Any real comic book connoisseur will house his collection in plastic sleeves with proper cardboard backing to preserve the newsprint and the spine. The same is true of a music collector. Stick those records in plastic sleeves if you have a shred of decency inside you. Is that CD in a cardboard digipack rather than a plastic case? Get yourself some CD-size sleeves and protect that thing, you unruly savage. Preserving the collection ought to be priority one for the collector. Before that album goes on the shelf, make sure you have it taped shut and safe from the elements.

Crisis struck when I ran out of record sleeves. Every time I bought a new record I took another sleeve from the pack, well aware they would run out one day. I had no need to worry, though. This is America where nothing runs out. Records stack easily, as long as you stack them upright to maintain their integrity. The day arrived when I pulled the last sleeve from the pack, and I didn’t worry too much. Just stack them next to the player so they’re already in grabbing distance. The stack is growing larger? We’ll get more sleeves eventually. Don’t worry.

Denial is the real American virtue. The scope of the crisis didn’t fully hit me until two weeks ago when I made the most shocking discovery of all. My CD sleeves ran out. Not only did my CD sleeves run out, but I had multiple Amazon orders en route. This can’t be! My world is…I don’t even know. What am I going to do with all of my new children? It’s going to mean going online to the place I purchased all my sleeves to begin with, but what will I do in the meantime? Think man. Think.

If there is one thing that times like these call for it’s cleaning house. Take a good long look through that collection and find the pieces you haven’t touched since the day you bought them. Ask yourself if you really need them and then make that difficult but necessary decision. The choice is hard, but there are any number of sleeves in this collection that could be used for new acquisitions.”

Click here to read the complete post.

Image in the post is of various album covers, from Leitzke’s post.

Space

Many of my improvisations include stretches of silence in which I and/or my collaborators do not play. These silent spaces function as a means of ordering the sound events, both separating and connecting them within the overall architecture of the improvisation. They also allow the listener to gather in the improvisation as a whole, and to become aware of the act of listening itself. (When we find ourselves listening to silence, we are in effect listening to listening.)

When I play with improvisational groups, such as Liquid Friction Assemblage, nine_strings, or Mercury Fools the Alchemist, my collaborators and I listen to the open spaces we create around each other. One of us might fill in a silence left by another, or we may simply leave the silences to stand by themselves. We do this more or less spontaneously, as we create unplanned but mutually agreed-upon lacunae with which we can balance and bind the sounds we create with our instruments.

Texture

On the double bass, I can alter the texture of my sound by bowing or plucking, or at a more subtle level, by varying the pressure or placement of the bow, its speed across the string, or by bowing across or below the bridge. These textures dramatize the colors that are an integral part of the sound envelope of the musical note, and which impart essential information about the note, such as what kind of instrument—e.g., string, wind, or percussion—produced it. To add another layer of texture to the sound, I can prepare the bass by introducing non-musical objects into it, such as chopsticks or pieces of cardboard threaded between the strings, or binder clips attached to the bridge.

My collaborators may contribute to the foregrounding of texture by creating sounds from a variety of non-musical objects—for example, running a violin bow across metal, amplifying rolling marbles in a box rigged with contact microphones, or scraping and rubbing surfaces of everyday objects such as springs and kitchen implements. Although produced by non-musical objects, these textures serve to highlight the color nuances of the more conventional musical sounds we create, underscoring the fact that there is a timbral element to pitch and focusing the listener’s attention to this sometimes neglected, sometimes taken-for-granted dimension of pitch production.

When we move back and forth between pure textures and more conventional instruments, and between musical events and open silences, we allow the music to recontextualize the sometimes mundane, sometimes startling sounds surrounding it, and offer the listener an opportunity to heighten his or her awareness of silence and texture as essential elements of the sound environment we all inhabit, whether listening to a musical performance or going about our daily lives.

A native of New Haven, CT, Daniel Barbiero has been active in improvised and experimental music in the Baltimore-Washington area for several years as a performer, composer, and ensemble leader. His music reflects his long-standing engagement with scalar and free improvisation, aleatory composition, and alternative methods of scoring for mixed ensembles. His creative activities have included leading and composing for the ensembles Shape Memory Alloy and Third Object Orchestra; he has collaborated with pianist Nobu Stowe and electronic sound sculptor Lee Pembleton, and backed Ictus Records percussionist Andrea Centazzo and Blue Note recording artist Greg Osby. In addition to his work with the Nancy Havlik Dance Performance Group, he currently plays in nine_strings, Liquid Friction Assemblage, and in the ambient/surrealist/improvisational trio Mercury Fools the Alchemist.

Edited by Jessica Wilde

Photo of Daniel Barbiero (c) 2010 Colin Hovde/Artists Bloc

“…The physical presence of the frames, and the invitations to participate with the frames, encouraged people to see the world in a slightly different, playful, way.

There were a few projects within the basic concept. Andrea and others made lists of actions which participants could pick to do – like fortune cookies. The last image in this group is one of them – go across the street and purchase something while wearing a frame. Rogelio created a focus within the evening by arriving decked in balloons, a boombox, and frames; the artist arriving.

This was not intended as a “powerful” or “deep” experience and we didn’t take ourselves too seriously planning it or executing it. I wonder how many planned “powerful” and “deep” art experiences really end up being that way for participants – audience or performers? I see how people really enjoyed the experience in many of the pictures. It was even something they could do together. I don’t think we could call this “high art”, and I’m not even certain if I’d call it “art” at all, but I think the project worked in a simple, joyful way, outside of those judgments and boundaries…”

Click here to see the complete post.

Image in this post from the original post of the event.