zaterdag 24 november 2007

Bert vd Brink's podcast is great: http://www

Bert vd Brink's podcast is great: http://www.concertzender.nl/podcast.php?cast=4.
Especially his rendition of Mercy Mercy is fantastic!
Paste this url in itunes.

A good quote I found and something I am working on: Aristotle consider...

A good quote I found and something I am working on:
Aristotle considered metaphor a sign of genius, and believed that the individual who had the capacity to perceive resemblances between two separate areas of existence and link them together was a person of special gifts.

woensdag 14 november 2007

Playing The Old Castle with Residentie Orchestra this week

Playing The Old Castle with Residentie Orchestra this week. I am experimenten with how to play the piece. I am trying not play too sostenuto but to make the notes rounder, to have more development on the individual notes. To be more flexible.
The problem is that we tend to play music like we have always heard it. The Old Castle is always played very tenuto and legato. Usually there's a reason for why we play things we play, but it can be good to sometimes doubt that way. And I must say, I like it in this case. It makes the melody more fun to play and it's more relaxing for me as well. The timing is more fluent in my case and I don't have to worry so much about whether I am in the right time and even about the sound!
The complete piece accompanies a children's performance which is absolutely great! Check it out this weekend on Sunday in the Hague. It's great fun!

zaterdag 10 november 2007

In Luxembourg right now

In Luxembourg right now. I was a judge for a European competition here and I heard some great musicans passing through. Every candidate had 20 minutes and we listened to about 14. There also was a obligatory work which was not so good in my opinion and that made it hard to listen to it14 times. Of course all the candidates played much better in their composition of choice.
I am waiting for my ride now to take me back to the Netherlands, fortunately I found someone to take me because I would have been stuck in the train for almost 7 hours!

dinsdag 6 november 2007

All up and running again

All up and running again. Studying teaching performing and feeling pretty well rested. Today I have a whole day off to do whatever I want. My Powerbook crashed last week but it is back and running again, I have to pick it up today, probably without any data loss.
I composed some notes again yesterday which feels pretty good. I will need probably like a year to finish the piece if I ever finish it but it feels good to create some notes every now and then. I took the decision to try it because of so many bad contemporary notes I have to play being a saxophone player. But I have to admit, it is quite hard :-)

Sunday I played with Clazz, a small big band consisting of jazz and classical players. It was a lot of fun and very inspiring. I discovered a composer who wrote a great piece: Eyes to Wonder by Ilja Reijngoud. I just wrote him an email to check if he wants to write something for me (www.iljareijngoud.com). He is a jazz trombone player who also composes. I found out that jazz players and composers are sometimes more educated in writing harmony and melody and rhtythm... which is still what I am looking for in music...