In a previous post, I discussed the difference in our reactions to music when we choose it (active selection) versus when someone else chooses it for us (passive selection). I claimed that the endless choice we experience thanks to Internet technology was making it harder to enjoy passive musical selection.

Upon further reflection, however, I see that I am actually making less active music choices nowadays than I used to, and technology is part of the reason why. So I’ve decided to conduct an experiment: How long can I avoid making active listening choices, and what will that do to the way I hear music? (more…)

A recent article in Slate by Jan Swafford got me thinking about one of the major distinctions between information on the Internet and off the Internet. As I’ve been arguing for years, the way we interact with art has fundamentally changed. Swafford looks at this from the perspective of a writer to argue “Why e-books will never replace real books”.

Basically, it comes down to directed or active activity versus non-directed or passive activity. When you turn on the radio, the selection is passive. You can choose the station, but you can’t choose the programming. When you search for music on YouTube, however, the selection is always active. (more…)

The culmination of a lot of planning, evaluating, and work, I’ve now got a new look for my website. There are still a few minor tweaks to be made, but the majority is there. Now that this project is completed, stay tuned for updated content that is on the way in the next month or so.

Composer Richard Zarou recently did a podcast interview with me, for his blog, No Extra Notes. No Extra Notes is a weekly podcast about up-and-coming composers. The interview deals with why I write music, some of the inspirations behind my work, and a range of other topics. It also features two recent pieces of mine, Sensational Revolution in Medicine and Kiss Around the World.

I was intrigued last month when I received a message from website AudioMicro.com asking if I was interested in a link exchange. They seem to be an interesting mix of a variety of different musical “services” rolled into one, and I thought they might serve as a good model for composers who, like myself, are interested in creating musical value online. (more…)

I just wanted to draw attention to colleague and friend Lisa Bielawa’s new blog, which I think is a good example of the kinds of things composers should be doing more to stay in the public eye. Lisa won the American Academy’s Rome Prize this year and has taken the opportunity to write about some of her experiences in Italy and elsewhere. (more…)

For a genre that claims to be part of the cutting edge, the avant-garde/new classical music has been relatively slow to adopt online tools. I wonder about some of the ways we might improve the situation. As I’ve written about before, the major issue of art today is organization, not content, so if we assume there is something in what we do that others might be interested in, we need to find ways to reach them. (more…)

Now that the Arditti res­i­dency is over and I have fin­ished the numer­ous grants/applications/papers that were due over the course of Feb, I have made some long-overdue updates. Cleaned up my MySpace page too. I’ll post some new record­ings there over the next couple of months. More infor­ma­tion to come on var­i­ous projects in the works.

Things have been very busy, and I haven’t had the chance to do any site updates between teach­ing, taking classes, and trav­el­ling for workshops/performances. I was recently in Montréal for the Ensem­ble contemporain’s work­shop, and I leave next week for the pre­mière of The Enslave­ment and Lib­er­a­tion of Oksana G. with Tapes­try New Opera in Toronto. See the Per­for­mances sec­tion for details.

In addi­tion, one excit­ing piece of news: my first jury piece from UCSD was selected to com­pete in the 2006 Gaudea­mus Music Week in the cham­ber music cat­e­gory. So I’ll be in Ams­ter­dam in early Sep for that.

I have a couple of upcom­ing per­for­mances of note, includ­ing the Tapes­try Opera To Go 2006 series, and my first com­po­si­tion jury at UCSD. I’ve also made some updates to my short bio, the pic­tures sec­tion, and my CV.