maandag 23 juni 2008

Today all day exams at the Fontys Conservatory

Today all day exams at the Fontys Conservatory. All day for hours and hours saxophone and I loved every minute of it. Most people played well and we heard some very interesting developments.... It's great to hear students change and being more expressive as time goes by.

dinsdag 17 juni 2008

About to go off to the Stedelijk Museum with a friend of mine

About to go off to the Stedelijk Museum with a friend of mine. Afterwards my last lesson to give before the holidays. My students have examens next week. Yesterday they had a try out in front of their fellow students.
This morning I had a good study: 3rd Cello Suite on alto saxophone in Db (!). What great music.... can/t get over it. There's so much to discover, so many lines to bring out, so many nuances to give...

2nd Try-Out 'On the Other Hand' Concert in the Thomaskerk here UPDATED 18 JUNE 2008

On the Other Hand, 27 May, 2008, Try-out at Thomaskerk, Amsterdam. Works by Cornelius, Lago, Wilson, Comitas, Van Klaveren.
Please check back for more of this concert periodically! UPDATED 18 JUNE 2008


Guillermo Lago - Strong Ties
Wijnand Van Klaveren - Intermezzo no. 2

Ties Mellema/Hans Eijsackers, Improvisation on no theme

zondag 15 juni 2008

3 Smart Things About Music 05

3 Smart Things About Music
05.19.08
Wired Magazine

1 The pitches in musical scales are likely derived from language. Turns out, aspects of spoken English and Mandarin correlate to the intervals between notes in a chromatic scale (the black and white piano keys in an octave). Is it music we love or the sound of our own voices?

2 When musicians improvise, the lateral prefrontal areas of their brains — responsible for planning and self-censorship — basically turn off. Meanwhile, the medial prefrontal cortex — linked to self-expression and activities like telling a story about yourself — lights up.

3 Getting "Eye of the Tiger" stuck in your head is the result of a glitch in your auditory cortex. This part of your brain processes sounds and stores them for later recall. It powers up and can start crooning uncontrollably after hearing just a few notes of a familiar tune. Want it to stop? Listen to the whole song or do some math.

Emio Greco - Pieter C

Emio Greco - Pieter C. Scholten, Holland Festival, [purgatorio] IN VISIONE

I saw some of their shows before. I like them, although he always had a somewhat bad taste in music and sound (my opinion of course!). Now he made a choreography to the Matthew Passion. And not just the 'normal' Matthew Passion. An arranger who should be forbidden to ever work in music again made the adaptation for this show. Ok, this sounds very bold. Maybe he is a very nice guy and a good composer, but yesterday's show made me feel very bad. He managed to take all of the emotion out of the piece. Incredible, Bach is a composer who is still standing strong even when performed badly. The orchestra (Amsterdam Sinfonietta) played well but the music was reduced to almost nothing I realized after watching the whole show. It hit me finally in after about 45 minutes when the arranger combined a flugelhorn and an accordeon in unison!!! I was looking around me, nobody noticed that this sounded very bad! Again, the flugel player couldn't help it, it was the instrumentation.
And the dance. Greco is a great dancer who I love to watch. But it didn't connect at all to me. I didn't see anything in the show. Well, he did a clowns act did drew my attention for some minutes, but that was it. No message, no emotion, no story.

I didn't like it.

This same day I went to Festival Classique and heard Faust/Melnikov/Swart play Brahms horntrio. What a music. And they were trying and doing it. They didn't try to shock for shock's sake. They played the music like it is. Not geniusly, but good, excellent even....

woensdag 11 juni 2008

Today was a good day

Today was a good day. I had a very inspiring lesson from Anner in the Sarabande from the 3rd Cello Suite and I think we made a great arrangement of it for solo sax in sounding Db. Afterwards I had dinner with a colleague which was also very inspiring. Talking to kindred spirits in saxophone can be great, talking about the same thing, music, reeds, mouthpieces, repertoire, etc.

woensdag 4 juni 2008

In spite of the fact that my quartet is playing with a substitue, we s...

In spite of the fact that my quartet is playing with a substitue, we still see each other as much as we can. Today we discussed our repertory for the coming 2 seasons. It will be very interesting! Debussy, Haydn, more Glass and Glazounow, new arrangements (Ravel, Franck, Bach). Good stuff to look forward to.

zondag 1 juni 2008

Ties Mellema was a guest in AVRO Radio Opium (Click for broadcast) in May 2008 (Dutch only)