got himself some dreads, a doctorate and some violin skills. Has worked with the likes of DJ Spooky (Whoops, almost mistyped that as ‘spook‘ – that would have been bad), Ryuichi Sakamoto, Philip Glass and other people I’ve never heard of. I bought his Etudes4violin&electronix from amazon mp3. Only 7 bucks, not bad. I’m glad to hear more of this type of music, blending the old and the new. So much is attempted so badly (Beethoven dance mixes), or so crudely (you know, that boxed violin found in pop), it’s good to know someone who’s studied music very intensely is participating. It’s also good to hear a academic musician producing something with tonality and human rhythm, unlike most avant-garde composers, who don’t have any two bars of music with the same rhythm, time signature or sequence of notes, ensuring lack of repetition that by default makes the music unique and at the same time renders it almost wholly inhuman. This is a very nice blend of avant-garde skills and multi-cultural folk music. And if you look throughout history, the best composers made use of their countries folk influences. Mozart didn’t write Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, it was a French folk tune he used to write variations.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 17:41.