The a capella group Duwende has made their recent album “Collective” available for free download. I’m still working my way through the disc, but the four tracks I’ve heard are certainly worth the time if you like original a capella or pop music. (Found via Acapodcast episode #42) Tags: a capella, album, download, free, Music, [...]

I listened to Radio Lab‘s episode “The Ring and I” over lunch today. It’s all about Wagner’s Ring Cycle and it was really in a lot of ways a completely eye opening listen. I really like classical/orchestral music but I have a really hard time listening to opera. Actually, I seem to just naturally be [...]

One of the things that I like about the Zune is that it has podcast support that is more like how I really use them rather than the way they work with iTunes. It’s not perfect by any stretch (Why can’t I squirt a podcast?) but it’s generally very good. Good enough that I’m looking [...]

Microsoft launched the second version of their Zune hardware yesterday and their software today. For the most part I am really very happy with the progress that the platform has made, but I am also quite disappointed in a couple of choices that I do really consider a big step back. I’ve already commented in [...]

I’ve always found sense memories to be terribly interesting phenomena. My most intense sense memory involves the texture and flavor of pancakes with butter and apricot syrup at a Perkins somewhere near what I think was Omaha when I was somewhere around the age of 7ish. I think we were coming home from a funeral [...]

At this point I think the inherent advantage of acquiring recorded music solely through the means of traveling to a brick and mortar storefront, perusing the incredibly over complicated system to locate likely albums that I might like to purchase, physically bringing the stack of shiny plastic to the cashier with my own hands and [...]

While I’m on the topic, I should mention the details about my horn. A few years ago after searching for a few months I came across a used four valve front bell American Euphonium that was in decent shape (Lots of scratches, some dents, lacquer is very worn but largely intact) for a remarkably good [...]

While we didn’t get to any actual gaming this last session, Shaun mentioned that he had acquired a clarinet and was was re-learning to play it after having a sort of relevatory moment at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. So I mentioned that I had acquired a euphonium a few years ago but had been horrible [...]

I think I spent about 10 hours listening to live music yesterday. It might have been 11, but it’s hard to remember precisely at this point. There is one particular good, and one particular not-so-good observation I have from yesterday however. Good: SPF30 sunscreen, applied early enough, does actually keep me from roasting my skin [...]

This weekend is the final half of the Twin Cities Hot Summer Jazz Festival, which has quite a few local and national jazz acts performing on mostly free stages in and around Peavey Plaza in downtown Minneapolis. I have been to at least some portion of each of the last four festivals and have been [...]