Cinnamon Basil

Click this title - Sippican Cottage: Spring Potatoes (From 2007)

I find this to be a brilliant little piece of life lesson.

Persistence.

Cinnamon Basil growing in this years herb garden.

Since I was a young'n I always had a green thumb for gardening. If there was space, and my mom was travelling to the local nursery to find plants-I went along to hit up the seed stand to pick out which vegetables I wanted to grow. I remember planting, growing, and harvesting my own carrots, corn, onions, radish, and tomato. I thought it fascinating that I could plant those seeds, water them, and a few months later be pulling fresh food from the ground. How cool is that? And, for someone as highly impatient as I am-gardening commands patience. Like it or not. That's therapy for me. Good things can come with patience.

Spring

Dogs

Well I froze up over the weekend.

For the last 13-14 years I have been living life with german shepherds. Raising 2 of them and living with them as adolescent dogs was anything but easy. They actually are an enormous amount of work and a huge emotional investment. My 1st shepherd died at 13yrs on Oct 6th, 2007. As my 2nd german shepherd approaches 14, her eyes become more and more tired as the days go by. I am silently panicking a bit. Losing both dogs-I knew the day would come, but I've always been afraid to face it. This is the end of one of my own personal eras in life. When I rescued them my life was completely different. That part of my life is now forever gone and can never be replaced. I had the opportunity to rescue a beautiful all black shepherd this weekend-I froze up and let someone else adopt him. It wasn't what I really wanted to do and I feel sad about it. A beautiful wolf mix I had applied for weeks ago became available also, and I wanted him pretty badly too, but I'm frozen. Maybe I need a break from dogs, but I don't feel it's for the right reasons. I feel I am just allowing myself to become lazy and unattached to anything.

For that there are no rewards.

End of another Era

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2008/11/is-baja-on-the-block.html

...yes I am too lazy to create a fancy HTML hyperlink that says "Click Here."

Danzante eco-resort was a beautiful place to relax, "hammock", drink margaritas and beer, take in some traditional organic mexican food, dive, kayak to remote beaches, and listen to historic stories from the owners that involved names like Steinbeck.

No longer.

I knew it was coming. We were told the reason there was a check point entering the property was because a huge developer had bought most the land and was planning on leveling the Danzante resort and the fishing town they mention in this short article. Yes, that's right...they want to level the town. Destroy it, drive the local Mexican folks out and build high rise resorts and a golf course. They were specifically told "your town is ugly and we want you out"-but you will not read that in print anywhere.

I feel more claustrophobic everyday.

End of an Era II

Nevermind all that about not attending Salonen's final concerts this weekend. I'm going. I don't know how these ticket sales work, but when I called a couple days ago I was told "sold out, both concerts." As of today, "available, both concerts. " ??? No matter. Stravinsky and Salonen this Sunday. The very, very last concert. Also will be going to the Brewery Art Walk this weekend. I've been to the Brewery Art Colony many years ago to watch robot wars just before they became a television sensation. It's a very creative/industrial atmosphere that I'd say changed something about how I see Los Angeles, which often lacks color and certainly creativity. But, The Brewery isn't a colorful place, it's the people that live there that provide the color. If your in the neighborhood, I highly recommend a visit to The Brewery Art Walk this weekend.

http://www.breweryartwalk.com/

...and there are still tickets for Salonen's final concerts this Sat&Sun.

http://www.laphil.com/

End of an Era

I won't be there. I really fucked up on this one and I feel badly. I knew these last concerts with Esa-Pekka Salonen were coming and I let myself think it wasn't important to me.

It is. It was. It's all sold out now. He's conducting Stravinsky too. I am ashamed.

When I was a music student at University we were fortunate enough to receive free tickets to go hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic every weekend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion . Walt Disney Concert Hall was not around yet. These were expensive orchestra seats too. I sat in the 4th row many, many years ago (1994 I think) stunned, nervous, excited, fortunate and eager to hear The Rite Of Spring. I had already spent countless hours studying this score for orchestration class. Never thought I'd be going to sit in the front rows witnessing Salonen conduct this massive wall of sound that during it's world premier started a riot.

Around that time we were also fortunate enough to be invited to the rehearsals for the World Premier recording of Lutoslawski's Symphony #4. We all crowded around a copy of Lutoslawski's handwritten score; at the time, I didn't really understand the weight of that moment. I just knew this composer was different and I had an immediate emotional connection with his music. I was about to become acquainted with the composer that for me would legitimize my connection to contemporary music and define what I wanted out of my own compositions. I was a bit tired of the serial approach used in such a way that it never seems to rise above that alone. The strict rules become painfully obvious with so many academics showing that they are not much more than...academics. Lutoslawski rose so far above this structure by using it in a personal way to create such deeply emotional and tragic soundscapes, it crushed everyone else for me. Well, with the exception of Stravinsky-but for me, they are not the same animal by any means.

I could go on and on about those weekends spent listening to the orchestra, and how much of an influence Salonen eventually was to have on my life as an aspiring concert composer. He introduced new music to L.A. in such a way that he almost lost his post back then because of lagging concert attendance. I think I blogged about it before somewhere-during intermission from a 1st half of a program with new music on it, the season ticket holders would leave. I witnessed this with my own eyes and laughed endlessly over it- "yeah look at these fucks...bunch of old richies all pissed off cause they ain't getting their Monteverdi or candy ass Mozart. Go home and stare at that expensive grand piano you got collecting dust in your living room some more...hell, y'all probably got a score of the Moonlight Sonata sitting on the thing and not one goddamn person in the house ever took a music lesson much less knows what a vulgar, angry man Beethoven was!" Not a knock against those composers-it's just unfortunate that many people, particularly the old, rich, pseudo cultured aristocrats and young people- think those guys are all there is to know about classical music (as most would call it).

This has to change. I'll continue to be an ass about it too because the future of concert music depends on it. Without an audience, none of it will matter. But just as well, without the Stravinsky's and Lutoslawski's of the world (just to name 2), and composer/conductors like Salonen who recognize and support new music-who drive an emotionally charged journey for the listener to experience into their compositions/performances; the future of new music will struggle.

For the man trying to impress the woman of his dreams, or to the teen sitting there because mom and dad insist, or the grandparents looking for an evening of emotional journey and reflection, or to the mischievous/opinionated music student suffocating for something new - where you studied, who you studied under, who you think you are and why you matter doesn't mean anything if your music and performance is without passion and a human connection.

Elitism and snobbery is killing the world of so called "art" music and it's future.
And for legitimate reason.

Musical Matrix

When I was in High School I remember an issue of sorts that involved the traditional vs. the electronic advancements of the day. It was either Algebra 2 or Trigonometry vs. ...the calculator.

We were not allowed to use calculators all the time because they undermined the process of learning the traditional ways of computing and re-arranging an equation. Fair enough.

Today I am reminded of it because, gasp(!) a few inclined composers are actually writing code for 12-tone row matrix calculators. Yep, it's true-you no longer have to go through the tedious process of calculating inversion or transposition. Just plug in your row, hit calculate and poof there is your matrix. It's accurate too, I checked it. You can even have your row analyzed for pitch-class sets and intervalic relationships. Yes this is a very dry way to percieve music, but if you didn't already know it-you'd be horrified to discover how much great music is conceived in this way. The difficulty is making it artistic and meaningful. If everyone could do it, we wouldn't have so many mediocre composers interested in film music.

If you didn't learn the traditional ways of computing a musical matrix based on a 12-tone row, you really should take the time to learn it. It's fun. Way more interesting than using a calculator, but I still find this completely cool.

Click Here: http://composertools.com/Tools/ and,

Here:http://www.dancavanagh.com/music/matrix.php

Leo Carrillo Beach