Music Articles and Reviews

Something not talked about often enough in regards to composing music, or producing any type of art for that matter, is the importance of leisure time. To be sure, the actual craft of writing music requires detailed and determined study, and you will not be able to compose great music without that effort, but art also requires more ambiguous things like feeling and inspiration. This is where leisure time comes in.

The best composers in the world will still need some type of feeling to strike them in order to produce their great work. What makes art significant is that it contains something more than the pure physical nature of the piece itself; there are human thoughts and feelings conveyed in it (if it is art).

Something that has been for the most part lost in today’s music listeners is a will to explore different styles of music. Many people will end up committing to one particular type of music and stick with it through thick and thin. The strange part about this is that there is more opportunity than ever to hear different music genres, but for some reason people have a bias towards what they know and are familiar with. Though it is nice to have a main style to pay attention to, you are missing out on a lot of great music by ignoring others.

A unique ballet exhibition opens at the Lowry in Salford this October to tell the fascinating history of The Royal Ballet. The story begins in County Wicklow, Ireland, birthplace of Dame Ninette de Valois, founder of The Royal Ballet, and follows her remarkable endeavors to establish one of the world’s greatest ballet companies. Invitation to the Ballet: Ninette de Valois and the story of The Royal Ballet is the most comprehensive exhibition on The Royal Ballet to be staged outside London. It will contain a mixture of costumes, set designs and other artefacts from the Royal Opera’s House’s extensive archive collections – many never before exhibited.

Dan Bruder has the gift of bringing people together to make great music. He has gathered a group of unlikely people from the industry including legendary drummer Liberty Devitto of Billy Joel fame, Lorenza Ponce who has toured with Bon Jovi, John Ginty who helped found the Robert Randolph Band and Muddy Shews who played with Southside Johnny for many years. These musicians form the Dan Bruder Band which just released the debut album, “Act of Kindness,” which was released on Bold Horizon Entertainment Records and produced by Ben Elliott and David Biglin.

After the first listen, I thought this to be an unlikely duo for an EP. Initially, in my mind the biggest similarity between these two bands was the fact that they both hail from “rust belt” state capitols. While each band member of the Lansing, MI-based trio “The Plurals” serves as lead singer of their respective track, the Trenton, NJ-based foursome “Honah Lee” utilizes only one lead singer, Tim, on its three tracks. It’s because of this and the nature of the two bands’ songs that the listener initially has a much closer association with “Honah Lee.”

Richard Thomas is to premiere his latest contemporary opera production at the Royal Opera House in February of next year. The mastermind behind the controversial and award-winning “Jerry Springer The Musical” will be unveiling his latest show which takes a look at the life of glamour model Anna Nicole Smith. “Anna Nicole” will star Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek and be conducted by the Royal Opera House music director Anthony Pappano.

In this day and age downloading music is pretty much ubiquitous with younger people and most music lovers in general, and even though it seems like it may be benefitting to download an album and not have to pay for it, there are consequences. By taking the music for free, not only are you getting around supporting the individual artist, you are also harming the entire music industry as a whole and limiting what future artists will be able to produce.

This is the fifth album from the Boston-based bar room heavies The Hold Steady, their Bruce Springsteen inflected albums carved out their own special niche with frontman Craig Finn maintaining a narrative by holding conversations over songs, often from several different perspectives, rather than singing. Their stream of consciousness hard rock has picked up a loyal fan base, as rather than being pretentious, their songs are always rooted in sympathy and affection for the scenesters, druggies, skinhead mobsters and born again Christians whos life stories they interconnect and unravel.