NetNewMusic: a portal for contemporary music

Check out NetNewMusic, a portal for contemporary music where you can listen to new compositions, read news about all the fresh music that is out there, and discuss with fellow new music enthusiasts.

New Stockhausen Piece “Balance” Premiered in Cologne

Since his untimely death last year, several new pieces by Karlheinz Stockhausen have been premiered posthumously. Yesterday night, the newest of these premieres was given in the Klaus-von-Bismarck-Saal at the WDR in Cologne. The composition is part of the larger cycle KLANG which was to contain 24 pieces for each hour of the day. “Balance” [...]

New kid on the blog(roll)

Say “hello” to Kulturblogger, an interesting new blog that I just discovered.

Gott auf Kanal 1: Zum 80. Geburtstag Karlheinz Stockhausens auf WDR 3

Man kann dem Westdeutschen Rundfunk vorwerfen, dass sich der hauseigene Klassiksender WDR 3 in letzter Zeit immer weiter zu einer Art klassischer Kaffeeklatschrunde entwickelt hat. (Wie die FAZ gestern berichtete wird sich daran wohl auch in Zukunft nichts ändern). Heute jedoch versucht das Sendehaus an alte, glorreichere Zeiten anzuknüpfen und bringt zum 80. Geburtstag Karlheinz [...]

The Ideal eReader

Following up on a comment by Myke Cuthbert and a previous post at TechCrunch, here is my wishlist for an ideal eReader / Internet tablet. This list is compiled from a research / academic perspective, so I guess that basically everyone who is in academia or research will be a potential customer. Hopefully academic publishers [...]

Heartily Approved

I can only support Michael Arrington’s ideas over at TechCrunch. Yes, an easy-to-use-larger-than-stamp-size-internet-tablet is what we all want. And while we’re at it: what about a same-size, touch screen eReader that let’s you annotate texts and comes with a zotero-like software to organize your bibliography?

Konzerthaus is the best

Going through my old post for tagging purposes I once again realized that the Berlin Konzerthaus is the most fabulous music institution in the German Capital. Best programming. Period. Someone should really give them a medal. Here are my Konzerthaus-related articles.

Raum und Zeit: Orgelfeierstunden im Kölner Dom

Cologne Cathedral

Betrachtet man die Situation nüchtern und als Aussenstehender, so sollte man als Musikbegeisterter die sommerlichen Orgelfeierstunden im Kölner Dom aus rein musikalischen Gründen meiden. Die Akustik in der riesigen Kathedrale des 13. Jahrhunderts ist einem differenzierten Musikgenuss ebenso abträglich, wie ein komplett verdunkeltes Museum dem Betrachten von Gemälden. Der exzessive Nachhall verwischt jeden Klang [...]

Rhapsody.com still not useful for classical music listeners

As some of you may already know, rhapsody.com has added a mp3-store to its portfolio recently. While I welcome this move, especially since the mp3s are DRM-free, the main drawback with the service, namely its poor user interface, still remains an issue.
The problem as I see it is a lack of a sufficient search-engine for [...]

The Future of Music Making

Surfing the web today, I came across a very interesting talk by our music colleagues from the MIT Media Lab. In this video talk Tod Machover, Adam Boulanger, and Dan Ellsey give a quick overview on their work on new musical instruments and the impact that their research has on society.
What I find most compelling [...]

German Radio

For all you radio junkies out there check out the WDR RadioRecorder. This neat tool lets you record the streams of the WDR radio station to your computer. The big plus of this software is that you can select specific programs you wish to record via a clean interface. The program will then save the [...]

Mantra at Harvard

Yesterday we heard Stockhausen’s Mantra at Harvard. Frank Gutschmidt and Benjamin Kobler captivated their audience in a late-night performance that was colorful, precise, groovy, and overwhelmingly lucid. What I liked most about their interpretation was the sense of unity that they created; at times one had the feeling that all the music came from one [...]

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928 - 2007)

Karlheinz Stockhausen

“On Thursday, December 13th 2007, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. it will be possible to personally say farewell to Karlheinz Stockhausen in the chapel of the Waldfriedhof in Kuerten (Kastanienstrasse).”
– (http://stockhausen.org/stockhasuen_passes.html)
I wish I could go.
Interesting video to go along with KONTAKTE.

Stockhausen lecturing:

Word Creations #3

On Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in New York:
“The Adagio of the Ninth was a classic Berliner tour-de-force: the extreme polish of the playing in every section created a fabulous mirage of music as three-dimensional space.”
– Alex Ross, New Yorker, December 3, 2007, p. 107

Skype, Facebook, YouTube = Fun Evening

Earlier on today I was chatting with a friend from Munich who seemed to have a lot of fun with the YouTube videos of the Mozart Karaoke that I put on this blog a while back.
By accident I came across an interesting video on facebook today that I wanted to share with you. Remember [...]