Blog
Heavy Metal Project
This Friday a new piece of mine is going to be performed by the XEVE ensemble. My new work "Ferrofluid" combines different perspectives of heavy metal with jazz and new music idioms. It should be interesting. This will be the first time that I actually do something loud at McGill. Come and check it out. It is posted under the events section of this site.
-EB
John Adams
John Adams is giving a workshop at McGill on Monday as part of MusiMars. He will be looking at my thesis piece and TrainSet as part of a public master class. I hope everything goes well. At 2:30 I start my presentation on Canadian composer Harry Freedman, 5:00 I start the Adams master class. 6:30 I start a rehearsal for FerroFluid, a heavy metal inspired piece I'm doing for MusiMars and the Heavy Metal project.
Lots of good music and exciting stuff. I'll be glad when it's over and I can relax a bit.
EB
Pen
A week ago I submitted the final changes for my thesis. The experience was funny because when I handed over the stuff, the lady behind the counter in the graduate studies department gave me a nice McGill pen. A little disoriented, I walked to the elevator and flipped the pen over to read: “Success” printed ridiculously gaudy lettering. I suppose this to keep the handing over of my thesis from being completely anti climactic. Thanks “Pen” for letting me know it’s all worth it somehow.
Wind Orchestra
Next Up:
McGill Wind Orchestra
SteamPunk Program Note
A friend of mine types away on what appears to be tapping away on an antique typewriter with an ornate view screen. This box made of wood, glass, ivory buttons and brass somehow has a dual core processer and connects to the Internet. My friend is a Steam Punk.
Steam Punk means different things to different people. It started as a subgenre of speculative fiction set in a modern world where steam power is still widely used. Recently the term has come to reflect a specific anti technology aesthetic that romanticizes the mechanical inventions of the 19th century. In our increasingly digital environment, technology integrates seamlessly into our daily activates. Cell phones, computers, iPods, are sleek, small and easy to use, which is precisely what “Steam Punk” rejects. Steam Punk is visible clockwork, steam, brass, valves, glass. Technology that is physical, heavy and unapologetic. At least that’s what it appears to be. My friends computer looks like an antique but it’s still packing 21st century processing power.
Steam Punk sounds like clockwork and relies on strange instruments to conjure the steam powered exterior. At the heart of this machine chimes pop punk chord progressions transformed with computer assisted composition techniques, rhythmic patterns are derived from clocks as well as drum machines. All of which put the punk, in Steam Punk.
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