FLoatingBones

In a discussion about the use of the use of counting in Glass's "Einstein on the Beach"... There's no indication that you ever bothered to even listen to Glass's full composition. This kind of crass commentary speaks volumes about your arrogance, ignorance, and intolerance to the diversity of musical expression. DCI (and, secondarily, WGI) has been my primary venue to understand new music. I don't ultimately enjoy all of what I hear on the field, but I do take the time and effort to understand music before coming to judgment. EotB is available on Spotify. As long as you are pre-Mission, you have no excuse for at least listening to the music before making such crass commentary. If I knew who you were when you came to my door (or wherever you contact people on mission) odds are zero that you would be able to sell me anything. Attitude is everything, and you bring far too much baggage to the table. Capiche? I think Crown's piece is more about the strange loops of Einstein's General Relativity than anything in particular to do with the relationship between energy and mass in Special Relativity. OTOH, Crown's title captures the concept perfectly. My first exposure to the concepts of such strange loops came from Hofstatder's brilliant title "Gödel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid". It was published in the late 1970s, is still in print, and is still available at retail bookstores (I just bought a copy for my HS-aged niece). The world has gotten much stranger since GEB was published: cellular mechanotransduction means that the function of cells (i.e., their expression of genes) alters based on mechanical signals from the surrounding tissue. Did I mention that Hofstatder lives in Indiana? :)

It should be very easy to get your fellow people on the mission to sing the mash-up from the first 30 seconds of Crown's performance to you. Nightly. That should get you some wind for your sails.

The quote you cited above is from the Wikipedia article of the musical piece. However, you're objecting to a Drum Corps performance. At the very least, you should be more clear about what you're complaining about. A recording of Einstein is available on Spotify. You can listen to the entire piece easily -- and evaluate the entire piece of music rather than the excerpts you hear from the DC show. I love Einstein on the Beach. I've loved it since I heard Erte Productions performed it in in color guard in the mid-1980s (see http://www.wgi.org/news/04092012-Retro-Rewind-Erte-1985.html ). Glass uses the human voice as a musical instrument; the close harmonies in several of the pieces are rather wonderful. The mash-up of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" and Einstein was, IMHO, rather brilliant. Based on the audience reactions, Crown managed to bring the 19th and 20th century music together in a pleasing and accessible way.

Unfortunately, DCI ran into some issues: they encountered copyright problems on the numbers 2, 4, and 8. Everything else in Crown's show will be left intact.

Erte Productions was a renaming of the Massachusetts guard Quasar (see http://colorguardhistoricalsociety.ning.com/group/quasar ). 1985 was their final year. Zingali had been on their staff -- perhaps from the beginning of that guard. Their prelims performance in Dayton was magical; finals was excellent but didn't have the same special tingle. I got the 4-CD "Einstein on the Beach" set after that WGI show. It was a real blast to hear that Philip Glass music again this summer. It was the very first time I've actually enjoyed amplified voices in a drum corps show. My other favorite Zingali WGI moment was Emerald Marquis in 1990 in Buffalo. They were performing Candide. There was a moment of the show of solos by a flag, saber, and rifle. The rifle did 3 behind-the-back catches and throws in a row. I recall hearing the famous Zingali "Hup! ... Hup! ... Hup!" in the audience. I believe that was the last WGI show that Zingali attended.