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Database: Christian Löffler on Working Quickly and Using Field Recordings
“That’s the way I work, really quickly. I finish lots of sketches with not too much detail, it’s a rough way of working.” “It makes sense to use field recordings because you already have something that is constantly changing and it makes for a really good base for the track. There will always be changes… Continue reading
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Performance Practice: Lessons from Music for 18 Musicians
Percussionists Bob Becker (left) and Russell Hartenberger performing Music for 18 Musicians at Park Avenue Armory (2026) I recently attended a dress rehearsal for composer Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians (1976) at Park Avenue Armory. Many of the musicians who played on the 1978 recording of the piece were performing (including my teacher), which… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: James Marriott’s “The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society” (2026)
“the beginning of the slow replacement of reality by screen time (65). “The screen tends towards chaos” (71). “The aim of much ‘content’ is not to educate viewers or to inform them. It is not even really to amuse them. The highest aspiration of many of the most successful masters of the medium is simply… Continue reading
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Database: Casino Versus Japan on Maintaining Original Intention
“These days you can record anything and then bring it into a program and get heavy on editing and processing. That can change the color or intention of the original idea into something new and exciting. I always try to be cautious about that, as it is easy to do and I don’t want to… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Jill Lepore’s “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State” (2026)
“farms of servers, clouds of data, AI ecosystems—the allusions are always to the natural world that the machinery is destroying” (5). “Within the Artificial State, nearly every element of public and democratic life—civil society, representative government, an informed citizenry, equality of rights, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and faith in elections—is vulnerable to subversion… Continue reading
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Composing Lessons: Traces
Georgia O’Keefe, Blue and Green Music (1919-1921) “Music evokes a sense of sightlessness or loss — a loss for which it is both lament and compensation.” Geoff Dyer, The Ongoing Moment (2005, p. 25) Music always contains traces—of its composers and performers, of its time-place-culture origins, of the instruments used to make it, of its… Continue reading
