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skywhopper

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Everything posted by skywhopper

  1. What about it? There are tons of pathetic aspects. I found this bit curious: "The [Nashville] school district purchased four clarinets from the 1950s for about $5,500 each, police said." What I wanna know is was so great about those clarinets? And why would a public school district need fancy antique clarinets? Maybe that's a great price for a bass clarinet or something?
  2. I will admit that after planning NOT to attend any G7 shows, I ended up going to two this year mainly because Carolina Crown was playing Einstein on the Beach...
  3. I'm not saying anything other than it's probably not a good idea to hold up symphony orchestras as a model. I don't think their financial problems have anything to do with the music they play.
  4. To be fair, I think many big orchestras are in tighter financial straits than DCI. My problem with this thread is that no one has yet defined what it means to be "100 years behind". Danielray appears to have based it on the year that the Blue Devils' music was written (though he didn't mention that part of BD's source material was a one-year old updated arrangement of that piece). But I would argue that Blue Devils' mix of a 100-year-old piece with two jazzy arrangements of that piece, blending together field battery and trapset, and a brass band with synth patches ranging from sampled guitar to dubstep-style bass, coupled with their frenetic hyperactive visual design is in fact a perfect representation of today's postmodern Internet-driven mashup/remix/meme-based culture. Here's some other recent takes from the past couple of years, apparently also 100 years behind: Dubstep remix (clever): Electronic remix (low-key but impressive): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQb4qHOVjnM 8-bit mix (annoying, but funny): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEs7mhBZIDo John Cage inspired, computer-generated infinite never-repeating (sound starts at 0:15 and thankfully only lasts 45 seconds): Remix via Fantasia: As remixed by Metropolis Ensemble: The Bad Plus live performance (awwwesome): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdE49jdfn6Y
  5. I thought the article asked for discussion. People have different opinions...
  6. Ha, and I assumed someone helped the kid grip it "correctly".
  7. I'd love to see a show based on a single symphony. For Beethoven, I'd go with the Sixth, because it's familiar but not as familiar as the Ninth, and because it's shorter you could have a better chance of fitting in all of the themes.
  8. Good point. Possibly it was something else.
  9. I think you're thinking of a different kind of .....hole.
  10. Do we have any idea if this is the final list or is it just what they have figured out so far? Specifically, did Crown get all the appropriate rights to use not just Philip Glass's music but the poetry of Christopher Knowles and Samuel M Johnson?
  11. I would assume "Rite of Spring" itself. According to US copyright law, Rite of Spring is public domain because it was published before 1923. However, in Europe, it's still under copyright. Until 2056 it would seem (85 years after Stravinsky's death) if I'm understanding the rules correctly. So BD would need to get the appropriate permissions to arrange, record, and sync the music from whoever owns them at present in order to sell the product in countries that respect European copyright laws.
  12. This is probably the most naive thing I've ever read about this topic. Please, stop.
  13. Well, someone just put me to shame. Nice work, Rick!
  14. Finally got around to watching some of the videos danielray is posting. Talk about "Modern" in all the worst senses of the word. If drum corps goes down that failed road (which certain shows have, most definitely) we can kiss it goodbye.
  15. Well, "Modern" has a specific and temporal meaning in art history, starting in the early 20th century, and so the vast majority of what MOMA exhibits, while considered "Modern", is in fact pretty old by now. If anything drum corps is a postmodern activity. The rules are vague about what is "good" and "bad", the styles of music and movement can vary tremendously mixing new ideas with old ones with no real distinction between contemporary and classic, show design is often self-referential to the extreme, representationalism and abstraction are both embraced side by side often within the same show, and the activity itself is a pastiche of a wide variety of other kinds of arts from dance to music to fashion. All of which makes any idea that the activity is behind other art forms the more ridiculous.
  16. Actually, Blue Devils used a 100-year-old piece along with a one-year old arrangement of that piece, and a 42 year old take on the piece. That was half of the material. The rest was 21st century brass band music. This is really a ridiculous statement to make without providing any actual argument. Drum corps is inherently a derivative art form, and it operates in a vastly different context than typical forms of "art" that aren't competitive and cooperative activities, but the age of the source material has zero bearing on where the activity is. The activity has been evolving year after year. Drum corps in the 20s or the 70s are as far away from drum corps today as film of those eras is from film today.
  17. Yeah, that was very effective and really worked with the music, more so than the other big visual moves.
  18. Well, that spring, prior to the season, there was a proposal that would have merged all the corps into a single class. It was voted down. Not sure what the margin was. Perhaps that was what he was alluding to.
  19. Pretty sure this is the Devils most traditional drill of the year (which already featured a lot more traditional drill than the last few years): (From Allentown, sorry for the poor quality/angle.)
  20. This is the best clip I could get of it, just one rotation. The camera moves so much other times and the sequence is pretty long. The bass drum circles the rolling bass four or five times and then follows it downfield and rotates once more before joining the battery again. I never saw this myself, so thanks for mentioning it!
  21. 2009 was just pure magic in so many ways. The drill, as George mentioned, is amazing. The music is amazing. The performance was amazing. That is one year that I can understand why BD scored so high, although I felt BD's show was relatively sterile compared to Crown's. In 2012, I thought Crown had the superior show and performance over BD (although I actually enjoyed BD's 2012 show more than their 2009 show). Compared to 2013, I thought 2012 had better drill and more challenge. But I do believe Crown's 2013 brassline was their best ever, and possibly the best Bb brassline ever.
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