Working hard

You know practice is getting serious when you have to pull out your hard copy of The Harvard Dictionary of Music!

Earworm: Rosna by Laboratorium Pieśni

I've been a fan of Laboratorium Pieśni since I stumbled across them thanks to the magic of Facebook a few months ago. Their earthy, gorgeous YouTube videos sucked me in almost as much as the magic of their Eastern European polyphony. They recently released their first full length album entitled "Rosna."

Laboratorium Pieśni is an eight-voice, all-female vocal ensemble focusing on international traditional song practice, particularly from Ukraine, Balkans, Poland, Belarus, Georgia, and Scandinavia. Their specialty is a capella polyphonic song with occasional infusion of folk instrumentation. 

The ensemble are actively engaged in field research, seeking to preserve disappearing folk music by infusing it with fresh life. They say it best on their website, "creating a new space in a traditional song, adding voice improvisations, inspired by sounds of nature, often intuitive, wild and feminine."

My favorite track on the album is easily "Sztoj pa moru" ("Out There on the Sea"), a song from Belarus. The haunting vocals and thoughtful use of percussion make this a particularly compelling track.

Lyrics:
At the sea, blue sea
There was a floating flock of white swans
And where did the gray-white eagle come from?
It dispersed the flock around the blue sea
White down rose to heaven,
Gray feathers fell on a green meadow
And who will collect these feathers?
A beautiful girl

Check out their entire album, available for streaming and purchase through Bandcamp.

Meme Monday

I ran across this Willy Wonka meme on Facebook today, and while I get that the intent may be funny ("You like music? But you don't understand the pain that goes with it!"), the longer I looked at it, the more it unsettled me.

There's a bit of an underlying message that "If you don't know x, you aren't really invested in y." Does classical music really need more gatekeepers? How about instead embracing people who are curious where they are in their exploration and cheering them on instead of chastising them for what they don't know? Let's encourage enthusiasm and curiosity instead of being another barrier.

Busy night!

I've spent the better part of the evening working on arrangements and sample recordings for the upcoming Le Tre Fenici show at Lyric Hall this fall. Here's photographic evidence that, at the very least, I used an awful lot of gear tonight.

Busy night in the studio. At least, a night requiring an awful lot of gear!