Coming soon
After nearly 5 months of inactivity, this blog will return. Stay tuned for a large project with a series of posts.
Tracker: old fire rekindled
Just found out that the wonderfully talented laptop artist Jeremy Flower has his own Web site. In one of his posts he talks about the Chicago high school visits of a few weeks ago, as a part of the “Ainadamar” curriculum. He has also uploaded the student-created beats.
I very briefly talked to Jeremy at one of the high school visits. In my heydays I used to be a fervent tracker (quite different from the infamous Trekkies) and now that fire has been rekindled (thank you, Jeremy Flower and Osvaldo Golijov). Although I still have my very own self-produced CD with a dozen or so embarrassing drum and bass and dance tracks, I don’t have any of the files anymore. And when I was creating those tracks, computers were still comfortable with Microsoft DOS. The program I used, Impulse Tracker, hasn’t been updated in years and running DOS is a little much to ask.
A quick Google search led me to MadTracker, a Windows-based program similar to Impulse Tracker. It looks great for a free product and it comes with some samples to start. I’m very excited. The main challenge now is building up a sample library, so I can start cranking out some old school beats.
Another Google search for samples led me to a vast library of orchestral sounds, called “The Sound Exchange” from England’s Philharmonia Orchestra. They have recorded every single note on every orchestral instrument with various volumes and durations. But best of all, it’s entirely free. In fact, here’s the policy on usage of the samples:
“This means that the samples are free to use for creative musical purposes. Even if you use them to create a No.1 selling CD (in fact we hope you do), we will not make any charges or any claim for royalties. As long as you have made creative musical use of the samples you can do as you wish: we only insist that the original samples must not be sold to anyone.”
I can’t wait to get started. And if I’m not too embarrassed by the results, I might post a track or two in the future. Cello concerto anyone?
New season, new press room
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced its 2008-2009 season today. The overarching theme of “Echoes of Nations” is really close to my heart. Ever since I wrote an essay on the question of “what is a nation?” for a scholarship contest on textbookx.com, I’ve been enormously interested in the subject of nations and nationalism. It didn’t win any prizes, but it changed my entire historical and philosophical outlook. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities still ranks high among the books that have had the most influence on my view of the world. But more on this later.
Coinciding with the season announcement, the CSO has launched a new online press room. I am proud to say that I have spearheaded the development of this press room. Although it is not a full Web 2.0 extravaganza, I did try to incorporate new media details: social bookmarking, encouraging bloggers to use our images and link back to the site and putting a heavy emphasis on the RSS feeds. Also, in the season announcement section there are downloadable audio commentaries from guest artists and staff.
I am curious to see how the press room will develop and I am excited to think about new features to add in the future. Now, I would like to encourage the readers of this blog to visit the press room at www.cso.org/press and let me know about their experiences. Browse around and if you have any comments, questions or ideas on improving the features, please let me know in the comment section below or send me an e-mail at dutchperspective (at) mcmvanbree.com. Any and all comments are much appreciated.
Superseriously cool
R.E.M. is coming out with a new album, Accelerate, soon. These guys can do nothing wrong in my book and you’ll find me at United Center on June 6 when they return to Chicago. The first single from the new album is Supernatural Superserious, a mix of eighties, nineties and new millennium R.E.M.
Radiohead, being Radiohead, of course gets all the publicity with its pay-what-you-like downloadable album, but R.E.M. shows to be even more innovating and creative when it comes to the Internet. Three months before the release of their new album, the band launched ninetynights.com. Every day a new 30-second video clip can be downloaded to mix, mash up or edit however fans see fit.
Now, the band has launched a site for Supernatural Superserious “which offers visitors a truly unique opportunity to download all 10 takes of the video in High Definition and edit their own version of the video.” Fans can post their creations on a special YouTube channel.
Good times.
It’s been a while, coming and going, etc.
All the while I wasn’t blogging, two journalists have started blogging and one journalists with a blog is no longer a journalists. Let me start with the latter: Marc Geelhoed, who wrote for Time Out Chicago, has joined the dark side and we now have two Marcs with a Dutch last name working at the CSO.
The first two are Andrew Patner, who’s now blogging at The View from Here, and Catalina Maria Johnson, who is bilingually blogging at Beat Latino. Be sure to tune in to All Things Considered tonight, to hear a report from Catalina on an amazing workshop with “Ainadamar” artists Jeremy Flower and Gonzalo Grau for Chicago students. For Chicagoans, this report can also be heard locally on Eight-forty-Eight at 8 p.m. tonight.
Yesterday, I saw a familiar language on Sequenza21 in an article on Marco Antonio Mazzini. I thought I’d be nice and do a quick-and-dirty translation. A little while later, the artist actually e-mailed to thank me for the translation. How about that for online communities? Want more on arts organizations and new media? Go over to Jason Heath’s Arts Addict and watch this video.
Drew McManus over at Adaptistration has a wonderful five-part series on new media. I’m gathering all kinds of information to do my own multiple installment series on arts and communication. All I need to do is just commit to it, but this little game has occupied a lot of my online time lately. But also, this little project.
It’s 2008
It’s 2008. I spent the holidays in Texas and it turned out to be a very American, and maybe even more Texan experience, including barbeque in Lockhart, outlet malls in San Marcos, and walking out of a church in protest against a horribly inappropriate homily that rambled about the homosexual threat against families (clearly a sign it’s election season).
Looking back on 2007, it was a good year for me: I became a first-time homeowner, a godfather and an uncle. Professionally, I entered my second year at my job and kept learning and developing: announcing a new season; another mariachi concert; working on the Web portion of the radio broadcasts; and seeing Silk Road Chicago come to a spectacular culmination. And most importantly, I still love what I do.
Many media already published their annual “best of…” lists in December and time picked its Person of the Year (Russian president Putin, which was a fascinating read). Somewhat randomly, I wanted to add the best performances, best books and best Web sites in 2007 from my perspective. Starting with three performances: Dr. Atomic at the Lyric Opera; Ayre in MusicNOW at the Harris Theater; and Mariachi Vargas at Symphony Center. My best reads in 2007 were The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross; The Creators by Daniel Boorstin; and Hoera! Een nieuwe president by Charles Groenhuijsen. And best Web sites of 2007, according to my usage, were LinkedIn, Facebook and BarackObama.com.
Looking to this coming year, an election year if there ever was one, we’re in for an exciting one. Performance-wise I’m looking forward to Ainadamar in February and, even though we’re only halfway done through this season, all the groundwork for announcing the 2008-2009 season has got me energized for the coming season. Regarding books, I’ll read plenty and report back. On the Internet, I’m keeping a close eye on the growth of Inside The Arts, but also how the election, especially after the primaries, will seize social media and the Internet as a whole. In one example, I have “thrown” Mike Huckabee to a friend on Facebook, using the “superpoke” application.
All this nonsensical “superpoke” stuff aside, it’s going to be an interesting election cycle for communicators and Web experts. But, as I was reminded in Charles Groenhuijsen’s book, “there are still more viewers than surfers.” Every candidate’s focus, first and foremost, is television.
Let’s see if 2008 will indeed be the year of change, already the year’s most popular word.
Adams’ Doctor Atomic at the Lyric: a review
Ever since my first opera attendance, when I saw Parsifal at the Vienna Staatsoper with Placido Domingo in 2002, I have not seen a better opera. Maybe it was the first impression that counts. Growing up, opera wasn’t present in my life; all that I knew of opera was packaged in those tedious concerts with the Three Tenors. No context, no stories. After Parsifal, I realized opera could be grand, thought-provoking and beautiful.
After moving to Chicago, the first Lyric Opera performance I attended was Der Rosenkavalier with Susan Graham. Brilliant and stunning, but it was still Parsifal that occupied the throne. Last year, Salome with Deborah Voigt came close. Last night, however, I saw Doctor Atomic. This, I believe, is the one opera that can challenge Parsifal’s crown.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Alan Rich of the LA Weekly wrote about the 2005 premiere: “In the Doctor Atomic of Adams/Sellars I detect more of Wagner’s Parsifal and, in their troubled genius/mystic/hero, the tortured martyr Amfortas himself. ‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God,’ cries Oppenheimer at the shattering first-act curtain under the Bomb’s menacing shadow…”
Andrew Patner, writing about the Chicago performance in the Chicago Sun-Times, makes another reference to Wagner: “Think of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle but with real lives at stake and the actual planet as a whole perhaps facing its twilight.”
Doctor Atomic by American composer John Adams and stage director Peter Sellars premiered in San Francisco in 2005. A revised version premiered in Amsterdam this past June. Co-producer Lyric Opera is only the third company to stage the opera, which can be seen in Chicago until January 19, 2008. The story reveals the tension and anxiety of the scientists at the Los Alamos test site, where the world’s first atomic bomb was tested, and reflects on the morality of the ultimate weapon.
The opera follows the “father of the atomic bomb,” physicist Robert Oppenheimer (Gerald Finley, baritone) and his wife Kitty (Jessica Rivera, soprano). Finley was more than spectacular in “Batter my heart, three-person’d God,” set to John Donne’s (1572-1631) poetry and Rivera was at her best when she weighed the consequences of the atom bomb.
Librettist Peter Sellars adapted the words of the opera, which means he didn’t write an original libretto, but rather quoted from other sources. Interestingly, many of these sources are declassified military and government documents, but we also hear poetry by Donne, Rukeyser and Baudelaire. This fusion of the factual with the beautiful demands the attention of the listener; in this opera every word matters.
The first act moves much faster than the second. After the climactic end of the first act with “Batter my heart,” the second act seems to linger on Kitty and her housemaid Pasqualita (Meredith Arwady, contralto), but the sheer beauty of the music, voices—Rivera and Arwady sing phenomenally—and perhaps most of all, the libretto, save the day.
Time moves at an even slower pace in the last three-quarters of an hour, which portrays the 20 minutes before “zero,” the detonation. And it needed to. The chorus chants “At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous” from the Bhagavad Gita, a bone-chilling metaphor on the morality and consequences of the bomb and one of the highlights of the opera. Then a warning rocket soars through the sky and an unnerving siren sounds, signaling the approaching moment of detonation. A second rocket goes off at zero minus two minutes; throughout the sampled sounds, I believe I hear a clock ticking, but its sound is slowed down, just like the minutes on stage.
A final rocket signals zero minus 60 seconds. Percussion and chorus create a sound of uncertainty and pending doom. The stage resembles a battlefield aftermath, when the scientists and soldiers take cover in the trenches. The detonation is not a vast exploding climax, but rather an unsettling roar accompanied by a distressing shriek. The last moments of the opera have little to do with the moment itself, but all the more with the consequences that followed. As we hear the voice of a Japanese woman echoing away, the stage goes dark. I didn’t know what she said, but it didn’t matter.
I left the theater with a lump in my throat. And I didn’t leave that way after Parsifal.
Other Chicago reviews:
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Sun-Times
Marc Geelhoed | Financial Times
Daily Herald
New York Times
Los Angeles Times
YouTube at its best
No post for a while and this is what I come up with? Have a look at this bizarre video; a remix of one of my favorite songs. (But it’s “low playing,” not “low plane”!) Find an awesome live version in the Netherlands here.
Saint Nicholas’ Eve treat: make your very own pepernoten
It’s an exciting time for Dutch people. Saint Nicholas’ Eve is approaching. Unfortunately, there are some things horribly wrong with the Dutch celebration of this great feast (and I’m not talking about the Eurotrash music here). But on a happier note, it’s also a time of delicious candy and chocolate letters. For those who want a piece of traditional Dutch Saint Nicholas celebration, here below follows my very own (tailored for American grocery stores) recipe for “pepernoten:”
Marc’s Pepernoten
2 cups self-rising flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 cup of brown sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 stick unsalted butter
2 Pinches of salt
2 tablespoons of maple syrup
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1½ teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon ground aniseeds
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Mix the spices together. If you bought any of the spices whole, in my case coriander and aniseeds, make sure to grind them. Mix the spice mixture with the flour and baking powder.
- Pour the milk, maple syrup, brown sugar and stick of butter into a small pan. Place on a very low heat (just enough for the butter to melt) and stir until it becomes a smooth mix.
- Pour this blend into the mix of flour, baking powder and spices and knead until it forms a firm and smooth dough. Add pinches of salt during kneading.
- Create small round balls of dough (approximately the diameter of a penny) from the big block of dough and place them on a buttered baking sheet. Make sure to leave enough room between the small balls, so that the pepernoten do not melt together into a big block.
- Leave the pepernoten in the oven for approximately 15 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- After 15 minutes, remove the pepernoten from the oven and let them cool down and harden for about 1½ hour. Enjoy!
Tag clouds and visitor numbers
Visitor numbers for my Web site keep growing. Last March was the first time my Web site saw over 1,000 unique visitors. This October, just over half a year later, I broke the 2,000 figure. The total amount of unique visitors for March 2007 was 2,228. Total visits amassed to 7,324; total pages to 15,558; and total hits to 32,356. FeedBurner tells me that there are approximately 55 people subscribed to my feed for Dutch Perspective, up from 43 last March.
Most viewed page was still “dutchperspective/feed” up to 4,341 page views from 2,989 in March. Hits from search engines continued to grow with 396 different key phrases and 697 different key words delivering 355 hits from Google, 174 from unknown search engines, 155 from Google Images, 17 from Yahoo, and several other hits from other search engines. Interesting to note that unknown search engines and Google Image searches skyrocketed.
Surprisingly, Metrosexual is no longer the most used key word in search engines. Dutch is now the most used key word with 3.1%, followed by Metrosexual with 2.7%. Others include (3) Chicago, (4) [van] bree, (5) second [life] and (6) public [relations].
Scott Baradell over at Media Orchard posted an interesting concept yesterday: “What Do Your Google Search Results Say About You? Create a Brand Cloud to See for Yourself.” And that is exactly what I did. As suggested, I copied the text from the Google search results into TagCrowd. I do have to mention I excluded the results that were not about me, but about the other Marc van Bree, a casting director in the Netherlands. To make up for that, I used the first five pages instead of the first three pages.
This is my own personal brand Tag Cloud:
