Tag: music

The power of an unresolved chord

Mechanical Dolphin

In New York, I attended a concert, “Concerto per violini: 18th-century Italian virtuosi“, performed by members of Early Music New York (EM/NY).

At the end of the event, EM/NY announced the retirement from public performance of Frederick Renz, the storied conductor and early music expert who directs the organisation. They also announced that plans for future performances by EM/NY were as yet unclear.

The program notes for the event reminded us that, while most people think of concertos as works for solo instruments accompanied by an orchestra, the original definition of the term in the Baroque era, was “a work for musicians playing together.”

Such were the works performed at the EM/NY event, including pieces by Vivaldi, Arcangello Corelli, Pietro Locatelli, and Francesco Geminiani.

There’s a tension within the very name “concerto”: not just the way in which the term has evolved musically, but between the literal Italian meaning “gathering” or “accord” and the Latin derivation “concertare”, which denotes confrontation or battle. There are so many ways we can come together, in collaboration, competition, or opposition – sometimes “either/or”, sometimes “both/and”.

I was reminded of a workshop series which I ran for an organisation facing a challenging strategic situation, thick with uncertainty. Together, we built scenarios to explore how these uncertainties might play out in ways beyond their expectations, assumptions, hopes, or fears.

Those scenarios were then presented to the organisation’s board during an away day. Board members were introduced to the scenario planning approach, worked with the scenario material created by the organisation’s staff and other stakeholders, and then engaged in strategic conversation: what did these scenarios mean for the organisation? How could they inform the decisions which needed to be made?

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Cranes in the sky

Mechanical Dolphin

Well, it’s like cranes in the sky
Sometimes I don’t wanna feel those metal clouds

Some time ago, I found myself reflecting on Solange’s song ‘Cranes in the Sky’ at the end of a strategy project. Sometimes the best way into something is at an angle; not through the Excel sheets and the PDFs and the ‘lessons learned’, but through a feeling, a stray thought, an analogy, a song or an image which reminds you somehow of the matter at hand.

In a 2017 interview with her sister Beyoncé, Solange explains where the song came from:

“Cranes in the Sky” is actually a song that I wrote eight years ago. It’s the only song on the album that I wrote independently of the record, and it was a really rough time. I know you remember that time. I was just coming out of my relationship with Julez’s father. We were junior high school sweethearts, and so much of your identity in junior high is built on who you’re with. You see the world through the lens of how you identify and have been identified at that time. So I really had to take a look at myself, outside of being a mother and a wife, and internalize all of these emotions that I had been feeling through that transition. I was working through a lot of challenges at every angle of my life, and a lot of self-doubt, a lot of pity-partying. And I think every woman in her twenties has been there—where it feels like no matter what you are doing to fight through the thing that is holding you back, nothing can fill that void.

I used to write and record a lot in Miami during that time, when there was a real estate boom in America, and developers were developing all of this new property. There was a new condo going up every ten feet. You recorded a lot there as well, and I think we experienced Miami as a place of refuge and peace. We weren’t out there wilin’ out and partying. I remember looking up and seeing all of these cranes in the sky. They were so heavy and such an eyesore, and not what I identified with peace and refuge. I remember thinking of it as an analogy for my transition—this idea of building up, up, up that was going on in our country at the time, all of this excessive building, and not really dealing with what was in front of us. And we all know how that ended. That crashed and burned. It was a catastrophe. And that line came to me because it felt so indicative of what was going on in my life as well. And, eight years later, it’s really interesting that now, here we are again, not seeing what’s happening in our country, not wanting to put into perspective all of these ugly things that are staring us in the face.

Sometimes it’s so hard to face the real issue, what the strategist Richard Rumelt might call the crux or the kernel of a situation. Our anxiety about facing up to the truth causes our attention to slip away from harsh reality; we seek comfort in makework that seems to gird us.

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Scripturient: Computing Taste – Interview with Nick Seaver

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For the latest issue of Information Professional magazine, my Scripturient column features an interview with Nick Seaver, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University.

Nick’s new book Computing Taste uses ethnographic fieldwork to explore how the makers of music recommendation algorithms understand and go about their work – from product managers thinking about their relationship with users to scientists theorising the act of listening itself as a kind of data processing and engineers for whom the world of music is a geography to be cared for and controlled.

You can read the latest Scripturient column featuring Nick as a PDF download here, and there’s a full transcript of our conversation, digging even deeper into these issues and other elements of Nick’s research, below.

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Songs That Set The Archive Free: Interview with Jonatha Brooke

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For the latest edition of Information Professional magazine, I interviewed singer-songwriter Jonatha Brooke about her experiences creating an album of new songs from Woody Guthrie’s archives.

You can read the Information Professional article here, and I’ve also included the full conversation with Jonatha below.

Matt: Guthrie’s archive is a blend of images and words, sketches and paintings – it’s not just a collection of texts, let alone ready-made lyrics waiting to be put to music. What surprised you when you started to explore what he’d left behind?

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Marvellous, Electrical: Distant Lands Are Not So Far Away

Mechanical Dolphin

Pop stars at the fall of Communism. A man who builds imaginary tools to solve problems that never were. A mining engineer who made a ten-tonne truck disappear through a metre-wide tunnel.

Approaching the end of the year and the final instalments of Marvellous, Electrical, we’re joined by two humble figures with secret artistic careers.

Andy MacDonald, factory supervisor at Queensland’s Cobb + Co Museum, recounts a life spanning mining, sculpture, stage design, and jet fighter maintenance in Part 1 of The Fitter And The Handyman.

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Then Alf Klimek, doing odd jobs and broadband installation in Melbourne, reveals an unexpected career as a Berlin-based Cold War pop star.

You can also see two years’ back catalogue of Marvellous, Electrical over at the newsletter’s Google Maps page. Distant lands are not so far away…

LIANZA #Open2017 – Future Sound of Libraries / The Process

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This is part one of a three-part series on the LIANZA #Open17 library conference.

In August last year, the organisers of LIANZA Open 2017 invited me to be a keynote at their conference, the national gathering for the librarians of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Last week, it all happened – I taped my mouth shut for an hour and led an adventurous conference session which brought the audience onto the stage, delivered a working library service within the keynote hall itself, and got us coverage on New Zealand’s national news.

So what exactly took place over in the city of Christchurch, how did we get here, and what can we do with the experience? If I share with you not only the product, but the process, could you see your way to trying something like this…or even going beyond what we achieved in New Zealand?

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A Romance on Three Legs: The Ivory Archives / @IAMLaustralia

Mechanical Dolphin

Is a library just a machine for making knowledge?

In such a place, can a piano be a research tool?

Why did a Kindertransport refugee from the Nazis acquire Glenn Gould’s favourite instrument for the National Library of Canada?

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Photo by National Arts Centre Archives, Canada

In advance of Australia’s 2017 IAML conference of music librarians, you can read the story of Gould’s beloved Steinway CD 318 over at Library as Incubator.

Check out “A Romance on Three Legs: The Ivory Archives” now.

Surfing to Salford: @Mozlandia and The Long Fetch

Mechanical Dolphin

“We look to Los Angeles
For the language we use
London is dead, London is dead…”

I never really listened to a lot of Morrissey, thinking about it. I mean, I had a bit of a Smiths phase at university and I put ‘Last of the International Playboys‘ on the mixtape for a stag do once — that’s about it.

Then Ziba Zehdar-Gazdecki, a cool librarian from Los Angeles, shared photos from a book event on social media.

Mozlandia? I had to find out more.

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Sing Me A Library: @IAMLAustralia keynote 2017 in Canberra #IAMLCBR

Mechanical Dolphin

I’ll be back in Canberra on 28th September to give the opening keynote of the music librarians’ conference, IAML Australia 2017.

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Mike Allred, “MADMAN”

“Sing Me A Library” will explore managing knowledge through sound, and outline some future directions for music-led information science.

Coming hot on the heels of my trip to New Zealand, you can expect something a little lively and a little bit different – raising the stakes from last year’s journey into TV themes, cultural history, and heavy metal.

You can see the full IAML Australia programme (PDF download) here.

Marvellous, Electrical feat. @drjessc – Couldn’t Escape If I Wanted To

Mechanical Dolphin

“The world comes together every four years to compete in the soccer World Cup and the Olympics, but there are very few global events that celebrate the cultural as spectacle. We could argue for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but their budget for wind machines and holograms is notably lacklustre.”

hooch

Eurovision scholar Jess Carniel talks wind machines, geopolitics, and European identity while we get to the bottom of Brisbane’s moonshine industry in the latest instalment of Marvellous, Electrical.