Lincoln Center

Last week I saw that Joshua Bell was playing a couple concerts in the area (one at the Tilles Center out in Long Island and one at the Lincoln Center).  I wanted to go to one of the performances because they were debuting Magnus Lindberg's Kraft composition.  He composed this piece in the 1980s but it's only been played a few times, and I believe only once in the US.  There was an article in the NY Times about their expedition to a New Jersey junkyard to find materials to use in the performance - they had gears, a nitrogen tank, oxygen tanks, metal slabs, etc - everything you could think of.  The premise behind the music was an "exploration in sound" - majorly the sounds created were from acoustic instruments (that is, not electronic) but he did have a computer producing some artificial sounds.  A lot of elements in this piece reminded me of John Cage and atonality - there's not a distinct melody to follow, per se, but it definitely had it's rhythms and patterns. 

They complemented this last piece with Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Sibelius's Violin Concerto, and then the closing with Kraft.  Joshua Bell was amazing, as always, and his performance reminds me why I love classical music.  I think it was important that I went to this performance because of that, and it's helping me to identify what I want to pursue within music. 

Funny enough, I sat next to a jazz musician and composer from NY that night.  We got talking because I commented on his TOMS shoes and then just went from there.  I asked how he got into music and he said he just kept coming back to it time and time again and so that's how he's been working.  It's cool to meet people and to learn these things.