Thom Dowd and Friends September 25

Thom, Gorse and Daniel will open the early music season with favorites of the renaissance and baroque periods. Josquin, Dowland, van Eyke, Marcello, Demoivre etc. The concert will be on Sat. Sept. 25 at 12 pm pacific, 3 pm eastern, 21.00 Suisse and will be an audio only concert for the best possible quality.

Listening address is http://38.96.148.45:8888

Cindy Ecksol, September 19 @ 12 pm SLT

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 19 @ 12 pm SLT
Labour Day Echoes
Cindy Ecksol, American Roots music
In this program, Cindy will wander through the songs of work and workers with her usual mixture of historical and musical context and a dash of warm humour about the absurdities of life in our own century.

Cindy Ecksol has been making and teaching music with voice, autoharp, fiddle and a variety of other instruments for as long as she can remember. She is particularly interested in traditional music of many varieties, and her repertoire includes everything from Irish tunes and Israeli dance music played on autoharp to dark Appalachian fiddle tunes from the mountains of West Virginia. But her playful side can't resist amusing modern songs about real life, which somehow co-exist with folk songs from long ago.

at: MUSIC ISLAND, SEA TURTLE ISLAND

Pianist Showcase September 18 @ 12 pm SLT

Keyboardists: Waltkeys Faith & JooZz Magic

~ Waltkeys Faith ~

From Walt:

I'm a musician who composes and loves to perform! I say I play Jazz piano because Jazz encompasses all styles of music. I reflect that in my writing.I'm working with Trowser Boa in Real Life, as well as many other jazz, blues, gospel and rock groups! Sandy Demina is helping me connect with clubs and audiences in Italia and Europa. Give me a call directly if you would like to talk about performing in The States.

Go boldly and dare to suck! I'm always amazed at what comes out of me when I do that.

Here are some links to articles that have been written about me.

http://showcaseliveinsecondlife.blogspot.com/

http://cisumwebzine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=108:waltkeys-faith-interview&catid=37:reviews&Itemid=54

~ JooZz Magic ~

JooZz is a Dutch musician, who started his musical career at the age of six. Playing the recorder first, which was replaced by the piano a year later. First band was formed at highschool and ever since JooZz is deeply in love with Music.

In 1982 he entered the Rotterdam Conservatory, but family business needed him badly. Now, a few years later, it's Music Time again.....finally.

The music of JooZz is best described as “coming from nowhere, going places”. Starting from scratch, JooZz takes you along to many exciting musical destinations, transferring breathtaking vistas into jewels of brilliant sound. Sometimes danceable, always rich, spiked with healthy doses of melancholy and lessons of life. Using the piano as a base point of reference, JooZz’s compositions, independent of any music style, keep your mind in motion until the next time you hit the ‘play’ button.

More JooZz at:

http://www.myspace.com/joozz

http://www.youtube.com/bradmonnett

http://www.reverbnation.com/joozz

Have you noticed the new SL "Destination Guide" ?

I think we all need to keep our eye on the changes and new content on the SL homepages.

A few days ago a Music Island audience member came to me to say that she'd tried to point a new resident in the direction of my Music Island concert series, telling her that it could be found under the Showcase tab in "Music Venues".... but... it wasn't there! She'd looked on the web and discovered that there was a new "Destination Guide" replacing showcase and that "classical" had ceased to exist as a genre so Music Island had ceased to exist as well apparently. (And yet we are still hosting concerts weekly).

I finally got around to wrestling with this yesterday morning. Indeed at that time there wasn't a single category in "Music" that I could put our series in. "Indie/Alternative" was perhaps the closest among the choices which ranged from Club/Bar, to Rock, to Blues/Jazz, Country... and so on. All the sub-sets of popular, social music were there.

With some difficulty I found a link to a submission form for a "new" listing (for a series operating since 2007) and started to fill it in. First problem, I needed a photo with specific dimensions hosted on Flickr only. (I use Picassa). Damn... searching on my old computer for an old Flickr account user-name. Edit a photo to exact specs and upload, figure out how to get the URL for the photo in a changed Flickr interface. Next problem.... the field with "genre".... I leave it blank. Write my summary and comments. Hit submit. Submission fails. I try again picking Indie/Alternative and sending along comments about how this was just to get the bleeping submission form to load. Submission fails. I have now spent two hours trying to solve this. I do more searches on the SL site and in the wiki I find a link to an email address to send to if the Destination Guide submission form borks up on you. I pile all my information in an email ... with assorted bitching attached... and fire it off.

Later in the day I tell this story at an inworld meeting and someone searches on Music Island and surprisingly finds it on the Destination Guide. It was in fact the submission I had made earlier in the day (miracle of miracles) but it was slotted with 18 assorted others in a new "genre" category called "Live Music Spots". Hmmmm. I think a number of the rock, country, etc. venues also hold "live events" so this is confusing and a "live music spot" is not a "genre". Since Music Island is on page 3 of the category, I'm sure that we weren't the first ones to say... "hey where are we supposed to fit in this guide?" I was left wondering why in this age where "everything is miscellaneous" we weren't seeing a system based on tagging with the resultant folksonomy rather than trying to create a classification system which will always be limited by the knowledge and worldview of the classifier.... as demonstrated by his/her ignoring of classical music in SL.

Although this might seem like a somewhat happy ending to the story, no one at the meeting using the old viewer or a TPV could access all of the information on the Destination Guide intuitively. Clicking the old "Showcase" tab on search brought up a link to the new Destination Guide but only showed them up only the first few categories on the guide.

Just in case you thought "search" was getting better.

This is not a deathly blow to the Music Island series because I have built up an inworld group of 1575 members and a maillist of 900 more. Most people come to concerts through group notices or at the invitation of a group member. I also post on a few other related groups where appropriate. However, I initially built the group from people finding the venue listing in events or showcase and checking us out. I don't know how many times people have said to me that it took them weeks/months to find Music Island and once there they connected to other events, groups and individuals who led them to an enriched cultural life in SL, that in fact their attendance had been a major turning point in their participation and retention in SL. For the most part these are well-educated and affluent consumers with a lot to offer the virtual world.

So let's make it difficult for them to find the cultural activities they crave?

p.s. Since writing this post I have heard from someone else not happy with another classification of their favorite spot.