I found this injunction in an old ukulele instruction book, and made it into buttons for my students. Don’t.
Entries Tagged as '*Music'
Don’t Play Fast
July 4th, 2011 · Comments Off on Don’t Play Fast
Patient Island
July 3rd, 2011 · Comments Off on Patient Island
I joined Brian Dewan and Nina Katchadourian in this collection of songs about Roosevelt Island. The island has a long and colorful history, and has had many names over the years: Hog Island, Manning’s Island, Blackwell’s Island, Welfare Island. For much of the 19th and 20th century, it was used as a prison and hospital. […]
Bill Irwin’s “Marionette”
July 3rd, 2011 · 2 Comments
The Regard of Flight was a bit short, so we rounded out the evening with some of Bill’s shorter pieces, under the title of The Clown Bagatelles. The last of these was a dance piece called “The Marionette.” I played this piece hundreds of times, and always approached the final cadence with relief: we made […]
Ukulele Class
July 2nd, 2011 · 2 Comments
I teach ukulele classes; here’s a brief clip of my students and me at a recital, at Brooklyn’s Jalopy Theater. (The clip has subsequently been removed.)
The Elephant Calf
July 2nd, 2011 · Comments Off on The Elephant Calf
Back when I was a composition student at Oberlin Conservatory, I wrote some songs and incidental music for a puppet production of Brecht’s one-act The Elephant Calf. The score was ebullient and dissonant, with cartoonish cues, and a few mocking quotations (B-A-C-H and a scrap of Mahler). It was performed in May 1973. The puppets […]
Red Telephone (2)
July 1st, 2011 · Comments Off on Red Telephone (2)
My occasional cartoon character Red Telephone tunes his uke, from the March 1980 issue of Ear. I signed it with his name, since I sympathized with his plight. And I redrew it a few years later, to make it crisper.
Comic Strip Serenade
July 1st, 2011 · Comments Off on Comic Strip Serenade
Bill Kartalopoulos and Mark Newgarden organized a program of songs about comic strips, back in June 2009. I sang several of them, some in duet with Peter Stampfel, which was a treat.
You’re Only As Good As Your Microphone
July 1st, 2011 · Comments Off on You’re Only As Good As Your Microphone
The microphone is such an essential part of music-making that I thought it needed a song of its own. Here’s the first bit of it.
Fort in Solrésol
June 30th, 2011 · Comments Off on Fort in Solrésol
Songs 1
June 28th, 2011 · Comments Off on Songs 1
The photocopied dossier you see here collects 49 pages of my songs, mostly for voice and piano. Do let me know if you would like one. The songs (and the texts) are: Epitaph (Richard Corbett) Greenaway Pictures (Kate Greenaway, Jane and Ann Taylor) We Have No Life Beyond Our Daily Life (Doug Skinner) En Route […]