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An article in today’s Wall Street Journal talks about how those bicycle-riding Dutch refuse to wear helmets. Only 0.1% of Dutch riders wear helmets as opposed to Americans at 38%. Some Dutch health advocates are pushing to get kids to wear the protective head-gear, at the very least, but it’s still seen as “not cool”. Read the article.
Look Hans, No Helmets!
A very excited Anne Akiko Meyers is the new owner of one of the most famous violins in the world., the Stradivarius violin know as The Molitor. My new BFF (after her appearance on our KDFC @ Yoshi’s Concert Series October 4th) is basking in the glow of what she describes as “Love at first sound”. What did this 300-year-old instrument set her back? A mere 3.6 million dollars! Here’s the entire story and a musical demonstration from last night’s Keith Obermann show.
Last week, the world(well, maybe not the whole world) marked the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the animated TV series The Flintstones. In doing a little on-line research (code for Wikipedia) I discovered that the famous theme song “Flintstones, Meet the Flintstones…” was based on a little tune from Beethoven’s Sonata #17. Take a listen:
On a recent flight to D.C. I encountered one of the most beautiful and provocative tattoos I’ve seen yet. This young woman was a piano prodigy as a child, doesn’t play much anymore but her ex-boyfriend was a tattoo artist. She wanted to memorialize in ink some of her favorite composers for the piano. You can easily make out the portrait of Beethoven. The others are Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Debussy. Interestingly, they are portrayed in the process of decomposing!
Amazing Tattoo
Joining the ranks of some of the UK’s most illustrious citizens past and present, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s longtime music director, Nicholas McGegan was made an Officer of the British Empire on this year’s Queen’s Birthday Hounors List. I asked PBO’s PR guy, Sasha Hnatkovich if this meant we get to call him “Sir” Nic. Sasha said no, he is now officially Nicholas McGegan, OBE- but stay tuned!
Congrats Nic!
An orchestra of laptops? Why not? At Stanford, Professor Ge Wang runs the CCRMA, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Is this the wave of the future? Computers are precise, can produce just about any sound and they don’t get tired like, say, a trumpeter. Add people to the mix and you add emotion, intention, and expressiveness. Wang says, “You pull these elements together and then see where the intersection is”. Click here to listen to Slork which is an acronym for Stanford Laptop Orchestra.
Once you help us put together the ultimate KDFC Summer Soundtrack, we will slap the Top 100 suggestions onto an iPod for you just in time for some very musical summer fun. Rumor is that gas prices will actually go down this summer, making the proverbial summer road trip more affordable than it’s been in years. Here’s a list of Top 10 Road Trips compiled by Yahoo that will have you singing America the Beautiful:
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-3434…
Our Beautiful Big Sur
During his 4 month residency at Recology San Francisco back in 2007, young Bay Area composer Nathaniel Stookey was inspired to write Junkestra, a 3-movement piece for percussion instruments improvised from stuff he found at the dump! Stookey assembled what he called “a sonorous collection of pipes, pans, bottles, deck railings, bike wheels, bathroom fixtures and shopping carts”. Junkestra has already been performed many times to great acclaim and you can hear it next when members of the SF Symphony take up these, uh, instruments to play it on May 9 at 2pm. Click here for more.
Stookey
That’s the nickname for a beautiful gilded harpsichord built especially for Philharmonia Baroque’s maestro, Nicholas McGegan. One of the cool things about this instrument is that it has two sets of legs so it can be one height when Nic is playing sitting down and higher when he is playing and conducting. Here’s a photo:
Hope you’ll be able to join us for our next KDFC at Yoshi’s SF concert. This time we welcome pianist Jon Nakamatsu to the casual nightclub setting of Yoshi’s. A native of the Peninsula, Jon won the 1997 Van Cliburn Competition and since then has become one of today’s most sought-after performers. When he was here for a KDFC Casual Concert, we had a great time and discovered that he is not only incredibly talented as a musician but super articulate, funny, and approachable. All those things will be on offer Monday, May 3rd at 8pm. Get your tickets here and check out Jon’s website there.
Jon Nakamatsu
