Gypsy Fire with Naftali Torok

Naftali Torok
Sunday May 31 @ 12 pm SLT (Pacific Time)
Music Island/Sea Turtle Island in Second Life,

Gypsy and European folk fiddle music played around the campfire inspired some of the greatest works of classical music and in turn the themes of classical music were embraced and interpreted by folk fiddlers of the day. Enjoy and learn about the European folk fiddle from one of today's masters of the instrument.

Made in Second Life and exported to Real Life

FRIDAY June 19 @ 4 pm SLT
Schumann Duo and Duo Appassionato

Live-streamed event
Music Island/Sea Turtle Island
Slurl: Music Island

The Schumann Duo and Duo Appassionato join forces for a series of live appearances in RL this June. They met in Second Life. They discussed planned concerts in Second Life, they met with a composer/arranger in SL to hand-craft arrangements for them and now they will be giving a series of concerts in Second Life. This is an event which will be shared by all of the concert venues that have supported their work over the past year. Live streamed from RL

Second Life on the living edge of music

On Saturday May 23, Tanku Kaligawa (Anthony Lanman in RL) shared the following works with a small but fully engaged audience who participated in active dialogue with the composer about his musical ideas and process. URL's provide links to the scores of the works for those who may wish to review what they heard (or missed hearing!)

1) Sonata 46 (1998)
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/Sonata%2046.pdf

2) Il dolce stile nuovo (2001)
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/il%20dolce%20stile%20nuovo.pdf

3) Three Lamentations on the Death of John Dowland, I. “Flow My Tears” (2002)
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/Three%20Lamentations%20-%20I.pdf

4) Hommage a Kurosawa (2005)
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/Hommage%20a%20Kurosawa.pdf

5) Hommage a Tony Kushner
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/Hommage%20a%20Tony%20Kushner.pdf

6) Hommage a Mandy Morris
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/Hommage%20a%20Mandy%20Morris.pdf

7) Hommage a Michio Kaku
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/Hommage%20a%20Michio%20Kaku.pdf

8) Hommage a Frank Zappa
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/Hommage%20a%20Frank%20Zappa.pdf

9) Siùil ò Rùn (2006)
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/Siuil.pdf

10) Synaesthesiac (Intro) (2008)
PDF Score - http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/SL/Synaesthesiac.pdf

A growing number of young composers and students of composition are choosing SL as a way of presenting their music for feedback and dissemination to an international body of classical music listeners in live time.

Anthony Lanman (Tanku Kaligawa) May 23

Music Island/Sea Turtle Island
Composer Presentation
Classical Music for the 21st Century

Anthony Joseph Lanman has become one of his generation’s most dynamic composers of contemporary concert music. Embracing his background in rock and metal, he has forged a new sound for a new generation, praised by Gramophone Magazine as “Intense” and by The Strad as “Wild, Edgy and Raw to Contemplative, Sonorous and Seductive”. The Contemporary Recording Society says, “”It is through his heartfelt instincts, and not random experiments in sound, that Lanman has come up with something genuinely new”. It is Anthony’s aim to create new music that will be accessible to a wide audience of music lovers and connoisseurs alike.

Born in 1973 in Des Moines, Iowa, and raised in Houston, Texas, Anthony received his BM in composition at the University of Texas, and an MM and DM in composition from Indiana University. Mr. Lanman was lucky enough to be taught and inspired by Adam Holzman (classical guitar), Dan Welcher (composition), Nigel North (renaissance lute) and Sven-David Sandström (composition). Mr. Lanman is also an active performer on both the classical guitar and 8-string electric guitar.

Mr. Lanman has been commissioned by such diverse ensembles as Duo46, the Noné Trio, the Strung Out Trio, the California EAR Unit, the Oregon Bach Festival for the group Fireworks, the British new music group, Ensemble Eleven, and the Ft. Worth Symphony. Mr. Lanman’s music has been performed all over the United States as well as in Turkey, Cyprus, Italy, Greece, England, Austria and the Czech Republic. His music has been featured on radio stations throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Mr. Lanman has participated as composer-in-residence at the Music02 festival held in Cincinnati OH, the 2005 Oregon Bach Festival, and at the “Essentially Choral” reading sessions held by Vocal Essence in Minneapolis, MN. He has received an ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer Award as well as several ASCAP Standard Awards.

HTTP://www.AnthonyJosephLanman.com

Audience Words inspire live composition process

SUCCESSFUL PAIRING OF COLLABORATIVE WRITING TOOL WITH COMPOSITION MAKES MAY 16 CONCERT/WORKSHOP SOAR!

Over a period of about an hour, 45 separate individuals contributed the words that inspired a stream-of-consciousness live composition as created and played on acoustic piano by Paul Kwo, (Enniv Zarf in Second Life). The young composer/musician has been the spark-plug behind many innovative artistice projects in second life. Never before (to my knowledge) have any of this projects involved so many collaborators at one time.

A few audience members with slower computers were frustrated by inability to see the words displayed on screen as quickly as they might have wished and some others struggled to discover how to adjust their preferences and controls to play a streamed URL inworld. But most audience members delighted as they saw their shared words fill the screen and the interplay of music and words that made for a meditative stream of collective consciousness.

The beta application http://www.skrbl.com proved to be a good fit for the task of collaborative writing in Second Life in any context, although in pre-concert testing we did note that the draw function was still too slow saving in our trials--too slow for a rapid-fire collaborative arts project in real-time.

On the whole though, this was a successful, leading edge endeavour that suggests further ways of involving audiences in future creative projects.

Enniv plays "Concerto for piano and your words"

Enniv Zarf (Paul Kwo in RL)
Saturday May 16
11 am SLT
Music Island

Enniv has consistently been one of the most energetic, prolific and creative voice in Second Life Music. The California-based composer has collaborated with photographers, visual artists and particle scripters to bring memorable artistic events to Music Island audiences. Now he will be collaborating with the audience!

Using the new collaborative writing tool Etherpad, audience members will be able to collaboratively write poetry viewable on big screens set up surrounding the amphitheatre on Music Island. As ideas come to individuals they will be able to add or edit the poem in process. Meanwhile, Enniv will be viewing the collaborative writing in real time and responding to the creative process with his own musical responses.

It will truly be a Concerto for piano and your words.

Young Zeid plays music from "The Red Violin"

YOUNG ZEID, violin

Saturday, May 9 @ 12 pm SLT

Have you seen the film "The Red Violin"?

The film tells the story of a perfect violin known as 'The Red Violin' for its rich red colour. At the film's beginning, the violin is being auctioned in Canada. As the bidding starts, the violin's history is revealed, showing that the violin has been in existence for over 300 years, having been made in 1681. Its history is told in five locations around the world: Cremona; Vienna; Oxford; Shanghai; and Montreal. To its owners, the violin causes anger, betrayal, love, and sacrifice. In each setting the dialogue is spoken in the appropriate language. Also, a variation of the movie's signature violin solo by composer John Corigliano is played at least once in the period it is played, with the exception of Cremona, where the solo is being hummed by Anna herself. Throughout the movie, the solos are played by noted violinist Joshua Bell.

The haunting score by one of the world's most renowned living composers is a challenge for any violinist. Second Life's Yound Zeid has been perfecting the signature pieces from the film for a concert he gave a few weeks ago in North Carolina. Now he will share his work with us live in Second Life at Music Island. It will be one of the most memorable concerts of the Second Life arts season. If you get to only one classical concert in SL, this month, make sure it is this one.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Xi Yang (Young Zeid in SL) began his distinguished music career when he was a student at the Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China where he studied both violin and viola Performance. He had his first solo debut when he was 9 years old. By the age of 12 he made an average of 200 solo appearances a year in China. He won the National Violin Competition in Shanghai and made his solo debut with the Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra. Arriving in the United States, Mr. Yang won a National Strings Competition in Arkansas and has performed numerous solo recitals, chamber music concerts and gave master classes to young string players from many public schools and colleges . Mr. Yang was the Principal Violist for the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, Florida Grand Opera and the Principal Viola with the Symphony of the Americas. He is also the Assistant Concertmaster and a guest conductor, soloist with the Raleigh Symphony Orchestra.

Finding Events of Interest in Second Life

Probably because Music Island is listed on the "Showcase" Tab of the Second Life search engine, newcomers show up at the venue hourly and are disappointed to find the venue empty and quiet on days when no programming is scheduled. If I happen to be there and chat to them I sometimes hear their frustration at wandering Second Life for days on end and finding only empty places. Although at any one time there may by 60,000 of the millions of Second Life citizens logged on, the virtual world is huge and it is a mistake to wander aimlessly if you wish to find people and events.

While Second Life is a 3-dimensional world with a lot to see in the various builds, it is still organized very much like the rest of the social web. You learn about events of interest through who you know and which groups you choose to join.

So if you are new to Second Life, wonder where all the people are or are finding it difficult to find events that interest you there are a couple of things to do.

First search on "Events" in the Search Engine and then then from the drop down menu further look for "Live Music", Arts & Culture, Education, or whatever broad category you are interested in. Click the "Search" button and a list of events will appear. Remember that the listed times will all be in Second Life Time (Pacific Time) which you will find in the upper corner of your viewer. (Please don't be cranky about things not being listed in your own time zone. It's a big world and most of us have to think in many time zones all the time in our jobs ... people who fuss about needing to convert to Second Life time are quite annoying.) Once you find something you are interested in you can click on it, get the details and a landmark to go to the event when it is scheduled to beging. Getting to popular events early is a good way to avoid disappointment as events do fill up.

Not all events are listed on the Second Life event listing. Most are promoted only to interest groups. So next go to the "group" tab on the search engine and type in some search terms that correspond to your interest. Try joining some of the open groups with a large membership that look interesting to you. Once you have joined I suggest you go into "group info" tab in the group window. You will see a list of the notices for the past month. If there are no notices then you might want to quit that group and join another. If a group is not sending any notices of events in a whole month, it's dead or pretty slow. If you see 4 or more notices, it is lively. Open the most recent notices to see if there is an upcoming event to go to. You will soon start to receive notices from the groups you have joined inviting you to events of interest. There you will meet friends and likely be led to other groups that might be an even better fit for your interests.

When you meet an avatar with similar interests to your own, click on their profile and see what groups they are members of and what venues they have in the "Picks" tab. There is no way better to find great groups than to see what groups other people who share your interests have chosen to join.

Expect to join and quit groups quite often in your first months in Second Life until you find a good mix that brings you news of things that interest you. Following these strategies, the only time you will be alone on Second Life is when you choose to be alone. Exploring new places is fun too!