UCLA Opera: Giasone by Cavalli

　

Opera was one of the certain musical genres that I always avoided to listen to or even pay attention to. On the night of February 12th, Opera UCLA and UCLA Philharmonia totally changed my viewpoint toward opera. Giasone, my first opera concert experience ever was filled with surprising moments. In addition to how Cavalli organized the lines and music, the modernized arrangement and interpretation by the UCLA crew was very interesting and astonishing, as well as the surprising fact that four of my music theory classmates were on stage and two of teaching assistants from the previous classes that I took were in orchestra pit and they were all playing their roles professionally. The initial reason to attend this opera was actually to earn the extra credit for one of music history classes that I am currently taking, but it turned out to be far beyond just an extra credit. Moreover, I only had to pay $5 for such an amazing night!

The music of Giasone was written by Francesco Cavalli in the 17th century. The libretto was written by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini. Giasone was first performed in Venice during Carnival on Janurary 5th in 1649. The name Giasone is English equivalent for Jason. The opera, Giasone is, in the simplest description, a sex farce about the main character Giasone, his wife Isfile, and his mistress Medea. Based on the comical content, UCLA Opera crews modernized the libretto in very humorous way. Even such modern vocabulary as Tweet or SOB appeared on the subtitles projected up on the wall of Schoenberg Hall. Opera is typically considered as formal or even snob entertainment, but UCLA Opera completely broke the theory in a good way.

However, it is still held by the music school of world-famous institution, the story is precisely based on Cavalli’s original. Of course, all actors are vocal performance majors and all words were in Italian. Make-up and costume were professionally done and the stage was built up beautifully. The orchestra, UCLA Philiharmonia, consisted of graduate students and facilities. There were two violins, cello, harpsichord, and theorbo (a guitar from Baroque era with the long neck) administering sound and supporting actors. The formal musical devices of opera, such as aria, recitative, and ritornello were there (if you do not understand what are those, Google them or take music history class at HASOM!). Such an authentic but yet humorous program cannot be found so easily. UCLA Opera’s program is more than what you can expect. Especially for music lovers, I highly recommend check out UCLA Opera when you have chance. Even if you are not interested in opera at all, just like me before attending to Giasone, it will be great experience. They will be having new program, Flight by Jonathan Dove from April 30th to May 2nd this spring. I hope to see you there.

UCLA Opera

UCLA Philiharmonia

Musical Innovation to the Music Industry: Last.fm

　
Last.fm has been considered one of the most innovative web tool in the music industry of internet era. In case you don't know, Last.fm is personalized internet radio station convined with features of social networing service. Simply put, Last.fm plays only what you would like to listen. To show my love toward Last.fm, I will post lists of tracks I recently played. If you think your musical preference is close to mine, you can add me on Last.fm.





Dan's Last.fm
　

Duke Ellington’s 110th Birthday Anniversary Festival of Music

　
There are always a lot of interesting events going on in any kind of music school, or maybe in general, schools that deal with arts. The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music is definitely one of those schools. Just by walking through the Schoenberg Building, you will see dozens of announcements of recitals, concerts, and sometimes, even music festivals. Since I transferred to UCLA in September of 2008, I have been trying to go to these events as much as the time allows. Last year, I suppose I went to around 20 to 30 of them. It is certainly difficult to pick one particular event that I enjoyed the most, but the Duke Ellington’s 110th Birthday Anniversary Festival of Music was definitely one of the most precious and impressive events that I have ever experienced at HASOM. I can proudly state that the festival could not be held with such a success at any other institution or venue in the world. On top of that, the festival was open to public and free of charge including the astonish performance by living legend, Kenny Burrell!





Our professor at the Ethnomusicology department and director of jazz studies, Kenny Burrell has been known as one of the most succeeded jazz guitarists in history. When I naively asked him, “So, did you play with Miles Davis?” he smiled and said, “Yeah, I’ve probably played with all jazz men that you know.” Such a precious guy is teaching at HASOM. It is well known that he praises and respects the music of Duke Ellington. He even has the lecture class called “Ellingtonia” (= Study of Duke Ellington), which was definitely one of the coolest classes I have ever taken in my entire school life. The lecture about one of the most significant jazz composers by one of the most significant jazz guitarists in history; can you find any excuse not to take the class?

Such a devoted Ellington scholar, Kenny Burrell led this Duke Ellington festival (he himself used to say in that way) celebrated Duke Ellington’s 110th birthday last year (Duke Ellington was born in April of 1899 and passed away in 1974). The festival was held on April 4th and 5th, the first weekend of spring quarter at UCLA. Over the weekend, UCLA Jazz Student combos, UCLA Philharmonia Orchestra, UCLA Jazz Orchestra, UCLA Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, UCLA Latin Jazz Ensemble, music students and faculties performed compositions by Duke Ellington orchestra with a lot of special guests. Especially, I cannot forget about the night of 4th. At the end of the night, Kenny Burrell showed up with his order made guitar and first performed his own arrangement of Ellingtonia montage. After that, four other special guests, Clayton Cameron, Tom Ranier, Lesa Terry, and Roberto Miranda came up on stage and played with Kenny Burrell as quintet! The special quintet played Ellington’s “Main Stem”, “C’Jam Blues”, and “Take This Coltrane”. There were a lot more to talk about, including the beautiful performance on the following day, “Ellington’s Sacred Music Concert” which, probably for the first time in history, focused on Ellington’s underestimated sacred works. But, above all, the sound of Kenny Burrell’s guitar was simply amazing. Any of the sound I had ever heard could be compared with his guitar. This blog post assignment has been overdue for about 15 minutes now so I have to finish up, but I simply hope that all readers of this article could listen to his guitar at least once in the lifetime. He totally changed my impression toward the jazz guitar. To all HASOM students, we should definitely be proud of the fact that he is teaching at our school.

At the end, it is quite bit of different subject, but I would like to share this interesting collaboration to all readers. He even covers MJ!

How Twitter/TweetDeck Can Be Used for Music-Related Marketing & Publishing

　
This is Dan's blog for Ethnomusicology 188, Internet Marketing and Publishing for Musicians at UCLA HASOM, short for The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Our music school was formed with the donation by the famous composer, Herb Alpert, who donated $33,000,000! In case you've never heard of him, I'm going to post one of the most well-known compositions by him for you!

Herb Alpert - Bittersweet Samba



This song has been used for the theme song of one of the most popular midnight AM radio programs in Japan, All Night Nippon, so every Japanese should be recognizing by now! All Night Nippon started in 1967 and they are still using the song, so Herb Alpert must have been receiving a lot of royalty that was generated from the popularity among Japanese radio geeks.


Anyhow, for today, I'd like to introduce how I'm using TweetDeck for my Twetter account. I created 3 group/list columns and 5 search columns. 3 of those group columns are News, Music News, and Friend. Tweets like NY Times and CNN are categorized under news, record labels and music news sites are categorized under Music News, and my friends are caterorized under Friend. 5 of my search columns are #NowPlaying, HASOM, UCLAradio, Radiohead, and Beck. I made #NowPlaying column because I'm interested in what people are listening to. Because of this column, my TweetDeck rings every 30 second, but I think it's OK. HASOM is for our class requirement, needless to say, but it might turn out to be interesting later when whole HASOM students start promoting events on Twitter. I hope that day will come. UCLAradio is the college radio at UCLA, where I used to be DJing. DJs are promoting their shows on Twitter so I can get those updates. Radiohead is my favorite band. I've seen several serious Tweets on this column. Beck is another favorite band. I'm going to write senior thesis on Beck so I'm hoping that this column will help me gathering information, but a lot of them are Jeff Beck or some other Becks. My TweetDeck rings too often so I probably should change the setting but it is certainly helping me organize Tweet. Especially when I want to check news, I know when I should go, so TweetDeck works well for researching purpose. I just wish that TweetDeck allowed me to display Tweets in Japanese...