FourScore Challenges the Audience in 'Shut Up and Sing!'

I had the opportunity to attend an exciting concert last weekend by a new P-town ensemble calling themselves FourScore. These guys are great musicians all, and gave a very imaginative and daring performance. I reviewed the concert at NW Reverb if you want to check it out.

I haven't been blogging much lately; I got sort of bogged down with writing and music projects but I'm finding my stride again so I'm going to make a conscious effort to post here at Musical Oozings at the very least once per week. I quit writing for Suite101; it wasn't really working for me but I gained some valuable experience at web writing there, so it's all good. That allows me to free up some space for more important things that I have to do here. Later this week I plan on posting the second installment in my series on learning the viola da gamba, and I have a local indie hip hop cd that I still need to review and want to do so soon, so heads up for that!

Dueling Reviews: The Vancouver Symphony plays Nielsen, Shostakovich

I went to a great concert yesterday by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, as did my NW Reverb colleague James Bash. For a while now James has had in mind the concept of 'dueling reviews,' i.e. he and I attend the same concert and write our own reviews of it, and yesterday we finally made that happen. I just published my review at NW Reverb; looks like I beat him to the punch (sorry James ;0) but I expect his review will be up soon. I'm not sure if he's reviewing it for the Columbian or for the 'Verb, but I think this will prove an interesting experiment and as always I look forward to reading what James had to say.

Long story short: if you love Shostakovich as much as I do, go hear this concert tonight!

Back to Blogging! Best Shows of '08

After a couple of SUPREMELY lazy weeks, (well-deserved, I might add), occasioned by my work having been cancelled for an entire week due to Snowpocalypse '08 and the five days I took off surrounding the New Year, I'm back to blogging again, so all five people who regularly read Musical Oozings (ok, I shouldn't exaggerate--all three) will be happy to know I'm back at the keyboard, fingers smoking!

James Bash asked me to write a little something about my favorite concerts of last year, so I posted them at NW Reverb, along with James' list of his favorites. I have another beer article coming up soon at Primer Magazine, more stuff at Suite101 I'm sure, and I hope to start archiving BachBeat (the BCC Newsletter I edit) online. I'll keep writing about my quest to learn the viola da gamba, and whatever else comes to mind. I'll be reviewing the Vancouver Symphony's first concert of the New Year here in a couple of weeks.

So happy New Year everyone, to all my new friends and especially old, to all my compadres from past days in my life with whom I am now re-connected thanks to the dubious miracle of Facebook--best of everything in the year to come!