Opera

The musicale had a lot of variety in the performance of the songs. The pieces ranged from being purely instrumental to art songs. There was also a mixture of music from the Baroque through the Modern era. The assorted musical periods and instruments contributed to a more varied Musicale. The group pieces at the beginning and end of the Musicale sounded the most contemporary. “On stranger Tides” was a good choice to start with because it was from a popular movie with which most of the audience…

Music has evolved drastically throughout time. There are countless styles of music in the world that I appreciate and admire. However, I prefer music that has a message or story in it that touches my heart. The combination of moving lyrics, beautiful voices, and outstanding music composers creates magic. One of my favorite songs is a song called As Real as You and Me by Rihanna. I first heard the song while watching the move Home. It started playing while a characters sacrifices himself for the…

Every day, I try to listen to a new piece of music. Whether it be a string group, unaccompanied choir, or even a percussion consort, I believe that by doing this, so much can be learned from just listening. About the mid-month of July, I came across this piece of music. I thought it was extremely fun and quirky at the same time! I had continued to listen to it, read some background information on the piece, and do a small amount of study on the work. When it came time to choose the piece for…

Ludwig Van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are the two most important and talented composers of all times. These two composers are very respected and very known in classical music around the world. For instance, we are still studying their work today because of how important there were. However, the two composers have many similarities but when it comes to their music they are totally different. These two famous composers are different such as their nature of music, the use of a different…

The scene that I have composed a song to appears in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2’. The scene takes place after (SPOILER ALERT!) Severus Snape is killed and Harry collects some of his memories into a vial. Harry then pours Snape’s memories into a pensieve to re-watch them. Snape’s memories take us back to his childhood and when he first meets Harry’s mother, Lily. The full scene is absolutely heart-wrenching as you watch Snape’s feelings grow for a girl that does not reciprocate…

“Why don’t you add the motif to your composition?” His voice echoed through the large, empty classroom. Dmitri Shostakovich, my tutorial partner, is critiquing my music! What a dream! Dmitri Shostakovich, a Russian composer and pianist, is my classmate at Williams College. He has been assigned as my partner in the Music Composition Tutorial. I am looking forward to learn more about why and how he composes music in the style that he chooses. His music represents curiosity and…

ARS Trio is a darkly twisted experimental Portuguese project composed of Renato Diz on piano, Sergio Tavares on double bass, and Jorge Queijo on drums and percussion. Despite the plans regarding this project had started in 2009, only recently the band members have reunited in Portugal to record their debut album, Poetics of Sight, strongly influenced by film and released on the W&J Productions, a new record label from New York. Using imaginative techniques and resorting to unconventional sounds,…

Johannes Brahms is considered the greatest composer of the Romantic period. Being the son of a musician and forced to play music to earn money for the family bills, Johannes grew a very strong connection to music and eventually made music and composing for his entire career. Johannes Brahms was viewed as the leader of music and best at composing in the Romantic time period while on the same skilled level as Mozart, Beethoven, and Hyden. Johannes Brahms was born May 7th, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany…

In the Slosberg Music Center the music was electrifying and it resurrected long gone composers such as Ludwig Van Beethoven and César Franck. While it also invoked Louis Gordon’s work, who it is the only out of the three composers whose work was presented that night and remains alive. On Oct. 3th, during Brandeis University’s concert series, named Primary Motivations, these three composers were very much alive and present thanks to the duo of Joshua Gordon, cello and Randall Hodgkinson, piano.…

The most challenging duty for a columnist, blogger, or anyone who writes about popular music is appealing to a demographic of musos and die-hard admirers. It’s one thing to venture off into the skeptical world of music aficionados alone, granted that you’ve taken a class or two on how to speak their technical language, but it's another thing to venture off without being able to communicate why an artist’s musical choices are, in fact, artistic. Take, for example, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A…