New Members! Please Introduce Yourself!

[Jeff Harrington]

Hi, please check in here and describe yourself and your musical interests. Favorite all time recordings, please! I see a lot of musicians, pro and semi-pro, a few composers, and a lot of folks that are apparently classical music fanaddicts! We'd love to hear what makes you tick musically...

[Russell Telfer]

Hello, I'm Russell Telfer
I've always been a classical music lover. My mother played the piano while I slept above.
I'm told Edward Elgar's son once played our piano, which I've still got.
My particular interest is Bach cantatas, but I like all music with a few striking exceptions. I think one of the greatest fields for music lovers to explore is internet radio.
I think that's enough for the mo, but I have opinions on other things too!

Russell

[Jeff Harrington]

Welcome aboard Russell! FWIW, my mother, who was a good amateur pianist, claims I got my musical interests from listening to her play when I was in her womb. My dad used to accompany her on the harmonica. I still remember them playing when I was a kid and we were all in bed. Nothing fancy, mainly show tunes and pop songs but it was a wonderful thing to go to sleep to.

[Jyothish Babu]

Hi
I'm a classical music lover. Play piano and keyboard, arrange classicals for keyboards. Read a lot about music and have a lot of students who learn music.
With love
Jyothish

[Joseph Dillon Ford]

Hi, Jeff and our CMN colleagues.

There's a little bio about me on Wikipedia for anyone who might be interested ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dillon_Ford

so I'll keep this introduction brief. :-)

My interests are very broad, but my main focus today is on new tonal art music in all styles, from the most traditional to the newly emergent. I think modernism has pretty much run its course, and the death knell for tonality was sounded prematurely. Still, I'm keenly interested in exploring unfamiliar ground--anywhere and anywhen I discover it.

Current projects include a setting of my poem "Mythus" for SATB chorus and orchestra (about seven movements); the Variations concertantes sur le nom "Paul Verlaine" (with members of the Delian Society) for French bassonist Franck Leblois and string orchestra (first performance expected at Metz next March); and a barcarolle for wind quartet and strings. If all goes well, pianist Valentin Bogolubov will be premiering my suite Christopher's Closet (2007) in Canada some time in the foreseeable future (last year he introduced my Three Chromicons in Montreal).

Otherwise, I stay very busy with the Delian Society, doing what I can to promote professional and non-professional composers and musicians around the world through various Web-based activities, including several virtual music festivals. I recently joined NetNewMusic at the kind invitation of Mary Jane Leach, a musical friend I got to know through composer Christos Hatzis' old "Music and Spirituality" group.

When I'm not doing music and the usual practical chores, I enjoy writing, the visual arts, and reading (Shakespeare, Hemingway, and A. C. Doyle are at my bedside just now).

In case anybody finds it's relevant, I'm supporting Obama for president. At least the Democrats included the arts in their official platform! ;-) However, I've never been big on chasing down government grants; getting cozy with corporate musical entities (like the AMC); carrerism; or status-quo capitalism. I'm not a Buddhist, but find that Buddhist thinking resonates with my own.

Frankly, I think the world is in pretty lousy shape right now, and we "serious" musicians are an endangered species. If I were a multimillionnaire, I'd start a musicians colony in some balmy valley "over the hills and far away." But family and fiduciary circumstances keep me here in Gainesville, Florida.

I hope all this wasn't too dull!

Best,

:-)

Joe

[Jyothish Babu]

Hi
It is great to have a personnality like yours next to me atleast in this web page. It is really encouraging that we still have masters like you promoting serious and tonal music around. Enjoyed some of your works thru Delian Society - great. We do not have many around here too who takes this subject seriously - to preserve good old tonal music and to follow as it demands hard working. Even our beutiful and melodious Indian classsical music also is getting killed here in the name of fusion and modernisation.
I was fortunate to get introduced to western classical music from my childhood and is trying to propagate the beuty and goodness of it as I can understanding all my limitations.(I believe that every one cannot be 'Sun' but a candle also can spread light) . I use Electronic and Digital Keyboards to re-create symphonies live.
I'm dedicating Franz Schubert's Serenade performed (&sequeced) by me on my Roland Juno-G http://www.4shared.com/file/93367900/e48f07fb/Serenade-Jyothish.html
to you as I'm sure you are going to wish me 'Good luck' on what I'm doing.
With Symphonic regards
Jyothish

Joseph Dillon Ford said:

Hi, Jeff and our CMN colleagues.

There's a little bio about me on Wikipedia for anyone who might be interested ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dillon_Ford

so I'll keep this introduction brief. :-)

My interests are very broad, but my main focus today is on new tonal art music in all styles, from the most traditional to the newly emergent. I think modernism has pretty much run its course, and the death knell for tonality was sounded prematurely. Still, I'm keenly interested in exploring unfamiliar ground--anywhere and anywhen I discover it.

Current projects include a setting of my poem "Mythus" for SATB chorus and orchestra (about seven movements); the Variations concertantes sur le nom "Paul Verlaine" (with members of the Delian Society) for French bassonist Franck Leblois and string orchestra (first performance expected at Metz next March); and a barcarolle for wind quartet and strings. If all goes well, pianist Valentin Bogolubov will be premiering my suite Christopher's Closet (2007) in Canada some time in the foreseeable future (last year he introduced my Three Chromicons in Montreal).

Otherwise, I stay very busy with the Delian Society, doing what I can to promote professional and non-professional composers and musicians around the world through various Web-based activities, including several virtual music festivals. I recently joined NetNewMusic at the kind invitation of Mary Jane Leach, a musical friend I got to know through composer Christos Hatzis' old "Music and Spirituality" group.

When I'm not doing music and the usual practical chores, I enjoy writing, the visual arts, and reading (Shakespeare, Hemingway, and A. C. Doyle are at my bedside just now).

In case anybody finds it's relevant, I'm supporting Obama for president. At least the Democrats included the arts in their official platform! ;-) However, I've never been big on chasing down government grants; getting cozy with corporate musical entities (like the AMC); carrerism; or status-quo capitalism. I'm not a Buddhist, but find that Buddhist thinking resonates with my own.

Frankly, I think the world is in pretty lousy shape right now, and we "serious" musicians are an endangered species. If I were a multimillionnaire, I'd start a musicians colony in some balmy valley "over the hills and far away." But family and fiduciary circumstances keep me here in Gainesville, Florida.

I hope all this wasn't too dull!

Best,

:-)

Joe

[Ron Nadel]

Hello fellow serious musicophiles!

I've been a classical music lover since I was a boy and my folks introduced me to Sheherazade. I played trumpet from the age of 7 - 18. I was taught by my great grandfather Isaak Nadel - who was a one-time student of Tchaikovsky, emigrated to the US and was a studio musician. Now I play the stereo and iPod! I am fond of essentially all categories and composers, though some much more than others... in particular I return to the German tradition most frequently, but that can be misleading as I am also wild for Prokofiev, Berlioz, Copland, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Puccini, Bartok, Janacek, ... you get the idea. Lately I have been consuming anything by Leonard Bernstein - in particular his Young People's Concert DVDs, his Harvard Norton Lectures, and his Mahler DVD. I am currently reading The Language of Music, by Deryck Cooke, having recently read his books Gustav Mahler, and I Saw the World End.

While in college I worked for large record store chains Wherehouse Records and Tower Records. I also hosted an opera radio show, Cantiones Profanae, on a college station in Southern California for a couple years.

I'm looking forward to getting to know the group!

Ron

[Emily Gojko]

Hi. My name is Emily and I am with the Strings International Music Festival. We are a classical music summer program for varied ages and skill levels. Our faculty is comprised of members of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and includes private lessons and master classes which are taught by these Orchestra members. Our Festival includes such alumni as Elli Choi and Ranaan Meyer. I am very excited about our season this year, which runs from June 13-26, as we have some great new programs for harp, piano, and flute. If you are not a student of music, but just a music lover, our concerts are open to the public, so I hope to see some of you in some capacity there this summer!!

[moonflower994]

Hello, I was introduced to classical music and opera by my mother when I was little.
I can't play an intrument nor am I very educated about music, I just know what I respond to emotionally, what I love. (blush)

[Jey R]

Hi... from "Jey" in Calgary Canada.
Favourites are Vienna waltzes by Johann Strauss.
e.g. Beautiful Blue Danube, Artist's Life, Voices of Spring..

[Robert]

Greetings Everyone,

I'm Robert and have been in love with classical music from a very young age; and a passion of mine has always been to make music -- the very act of making music -- via "whatever" medium.

I've played the piano and organ, being at one point in time, in my younger life, a music minister for a small Catholic church in Southern Ohio, where, as One might imagine, fell completely in love with the Mass in general, and being a high school with a passion for music, anyway, I thrust into studying the sacred music all the way from the Middle Ages up to the Classical periods. I played tuba in the high school band and fell completely in love with Baroque music and striving to get what every other tubist considers a feat of ability -- those low pedal notes, all the way up to those very high and tight notes. It's the very bass line of so many pieces that drove me to begging my band instructor for theory lessons.

I've been lately working with several pieces to arrange for the recorder. Of the "Classical" music genre, where all music from the age is seemingly lumped together by those who know no better, I do love, especially the Renaissance period lute and recorder pieces.

Nowadays, I've been going the digital/electronic route and playing with not only full compositions, but also creating rehearsal (or even production, if I wish to perform solo) pieces. Soundfont technology has completely enwrapped me in her loving embrace. Perhaps it's my bit to help keep such music alive using the newest forms. Perhaps one day in the very far future, someone will go back to the archives and find the technology to preserve home-made .mp3s similar to what we're doing nowadays with wax cylinders and 8-tracks!

Just being a part of it all, the "doing" of it, the listening to others "do" it, the study of the history and theory of it -- it's all a part of me since I was about five or six years of age.

I like old (speaking in Classical terms) My favorite composers (I can't say that I have one particular) are Byrd, Bach, Handel, and Gabrieli. Don't get me wrong...as much as I love Mozart and Beethoven and Haydn, someone like Tchaikovsky is a bit modern for my taste -- although, his works, even, are masterpieces.

I'm all over the map when it comes to working with classical music (the whole genre, to include all of the ages) so, I'll definitely be posting blogs here and there, and offering everyone a taste of what I do.

Oh, and in the meantime, while working with music, I knit.

)O(
Robert

[George S]

My father and I are classical music listening lovers. My father has live recordings from 1900's to more recent. The ones he has are not published anywhere in the world. Would be interested if I would email you a list that he has to see if your interested in purchasing any?

[Magnificat]

Hi All,

I'm very pleased to have found this ning. I am a conductor and a baroque cellist and serve as Artistic Director for Magnificat, an ensemble of voices and instruments that focuses on music of the 17th century. You can read all about us at Magnificat's website and blog.

Obviously, I'm very interested in the rich and varied repertoire of the early baroque period, but my tastes in listening range fairly broadly, from chant to Radiohead, with many stops in between. It would be impossible to choose a favorite recording, but I can say that among my favorite concert experiences of all time (tthose in which I had the privilege of being a member of the audience) include:

Piatigorsky and Parnas in a performance of the Schubert Quintet at Kneisel Hall in Maine 1975
Jan de Gaetani singing in Mahler 2nd Symphony at Eastman 1980
Joao Gilberto at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1983
Wieland Kuijken and Robert Kohnen playing Couperin Suites at the LEgion of Honor in San Francisco 1988
Radiohead - third Salamanca show in 2002

I look forward to contributing to the discussion here at Classical Music Now