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Three Excellent Books About Creativity
Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc. Philippe Petit’s Creativity: The Perfect Crime. Kyna Leski’s The Storm of Creativity. Continue reading
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Haruki Murakami On Writing And Rhythm
“No one ever taught me how to write, and I’ve never made a study of writing techniques. So how did I learn to write? From listening to music. And what’s the most important thing in writing? It’s rhythm. No one’s going to read what you write unless it’s got rhythm. It has to have an… Continue reading
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Discovery Chains: From Murcof To Murch
This post is about how one thing can lead to another. In other words, it’s about process. I checked my email and opened a newsletter from the online music retailer, bleep.com. Scrolling through Bleep’s recommendations I found a number that seemed promising, and began downloading them on Spotify. One release that stood out was a… Continue reading
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John Cage And Improvisation
Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living. -John Cage The American experimental composer John Cage once said that he didn’t believe in improvising as a composing technique. The reason is that when we improvise we only play what we already know. But that has not been my experience. When… Continue reading
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Notes On David Salle’s “How To See”
“To take a work’s psychic temperature, look at its surface energy.” – David Salle, How To See, p. 15. David Salle’s How To See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art is a superb collection of writings about understanding visual art in terms of its intrinsic affective qualities rather than in terms of what it may express about… Continue reading
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Timeline: A Bell Pattern Who Traveled Far
Imagine that you’re a bell pattern. Your name is Timeline. You were born somewhere in West Africa. And you sound like this: 3 + 3 + 2. That’s eight counts long but unevenly divided into two threes and one two. People like you because your unusual design makes you syncopated, endlessly interesting, and fun to… Continue reading
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Notes On An R&B Concert
We arrived somewhat late into D’Angelo’s set at the Forest Hills Tennis club on a warm early evening in June, but we could hear the bass frequencies from several blocks away. Emerging from the stairwell into section six of what used to be a tennis court felt like entering a party with everyone facing a… Continue reading
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Four Piano Music
My new recording Four Piano Music is now available here. Continue reading
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On The Drumming Of Tony Allen
In his memoir Tony Allen: An Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afrobeat (co-authored with Michael Veal, Duke University Press, 2013), the eminent Nigerian drummer recalls the influence of American jazz innovators on his own musicianship. It was in the playing of the African Americans such as Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, and Max Roach that… Continue reading
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