VYMA Winter Concert

Verdugo Young Musicians Association
Samuel Chilingarian, Director

Featuring:
Verdugo String Orchestra
Verdugo Youth Orchestra
Chamber Ensembles
Verdugo Esnamble

presents
Winter Concert

Featuring Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Smith, and More!

Saturday, December 11
3:00pm
Thorne Hall
Free!

Three Upcoming Concerts!

The Occidental College Music Department Presents:

Friday, December 3, 2010
Music On A Friday Afternoon
Bird Studio 4:30 p.m.
Featuring
Vocalists: Adriel Henrikson, Michael Kuten, Noah Tovares, Alison Pentland, Daniel Strychacz
Instrumentalists: Sarah Doyel, Nina Paus-Weiler, Ben Toney, Emma La Fleur, Emma Crow Willard, Shelby King, Beverly Miras, Joanna Kang and Christopher Neff

FREE!

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Student Composers in Concert
Under the direction of Andre Myers
Bird Studio 7:30pm
Free
Featuring Music by Andrew Chang, Jeffrey Leblow, Daniel Strychacz and The Music Libraries' Own AISLING BROUWER


Sunday, December 5, 2010

Holiday Concert
Occidental Glee Club and College Chorus
Directed by Desiree LaVertu
Herrick Chapel 3:30pm
Featuring Music by Handel, Vivaldi, and Grieg as well as traditional Chanukah and Christmas favorites
$10 General Admission Free with Oxy ID

Music On A Friday Afternoon

The Occidental Music Department
presents
Music On a Friday Afternoon

Friday, November 12, 2010
Bird Studio
4:30pm

Featuring:

Vocalists:
Kainoa King, Santiago Alcantra, Katie Goldberg,
Rebecca Scott, Alexander Kaplan Reyes & Kristine Nowlain

Instrumentalists
Megan Lang, violin, Alyson Melzer, violin,
Amy Ishioka, cello, Mary Flagstad, cello,
Andrew Chang, piano, Joseph Wei, piano

FREE

Junko Ueno Garrett

The Occidental College Music Department
Presents a
Faculty Artist Recital
Bicentennial Celebration

Junko Ueno Garrett
With Friends from the LA Phalharmonic
Robert Vijay Gupta and Johnny Lee, Violin
John Hayhurst, Viola
David Garrett, Cello

Playing
Schumann's Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major, Op. 42,
and Chopin's Ballade #4 in in F minor, op. 52

Monday, November 8th, 2010
Bird Studio
12:30pm
CSP 99
Free

Halloween Special

The Occidental College Music Department
Presents
MOFA
Halloween Special

Friday, October 29, 2010
Bird Studio
4:30 p.m.

Featuring:
Alexandra Forman, Tim Chang, Minjoo Lee, Doug Rosenberg, Andrew Chang, Michael Ursu, Margaret Hawkins, Adrienne Mikovari, Mike Kutten, Seth Hansen

Glee Club Homecoming Concert

Occidental College Glee Club
Desiree LaVertu, Director
presents its annual
Homecoming Concert
Fantastic choral works by Palestrina, Brahms, Frieg
and Stroope as well as contemporary favorites

Come Join the Glee Club and for the fabulous "Football Medley" "Occidental Fair"and the return of "Io Triumphe"

Friday, November 5th, 2010
8:15 pm
Thorne Hall
$10 General Admission
Student with Oxy I.D. Free


For More Information call: (323) 259-2785
Or email: lavertu@oxy.edu

Faculty Artist Series Concert Ft. LARRY KARUSH

The Occidental College Music Department presents
A Faculty Artist Series concert featuring
Larry Karush
Noted Jazz Pianist and World Music Expert

This Saturday, October 23rd at 7:30pm in Bird Studio.

Please come out to see Larry Karush this Saturday for what is sure to be one of the highlights of the faculty artist series. It promises to be a great show!

The surprising variety of the musicians Wikipedia said went to Occidental

We all know Wikipedia is currently the reigning champion for knowledge on most subjects, and so it was rightfully the direction to which I turned when trying to discover which famous musicians called Occidental their alma mater. To my surprise, Wikipedia listed only three musicians as Oxy alums, but thankfully, they have hit all of the major corners of American culture. For your enjoyment, I have a bit of information on each.

Eddie Galan (‘01): Musician, singer, and producer. Has found himself in the beating heart of American culture, producing such albums as the High School Musical soundtrack, as well as albums by Hannah Montana and some band called “The Clique Girlz”. His music has been featured on MTV’s “The Hills” and “Keeping up with the Kardashians”

Who comes in stark comparison with…

Jake Shears (’01, did not graduate): Male lead vocalist for the band “Scissor Sisters”. Major player in the English glam rock and electro-clash scene, and outspoken gay rights advocate. While he has never gained much success in the United States, he is very prominent in the UK, Australia, and Canada. In 2004, Bono called Scissor Sisters “the best pop group in the world”.

And, for a sense of history…

Tui St. George Tucker (’44): Noted composer and recorder player. Developed a special recorder design which was famous for having extra holes. Her most notable composition was “Indian Summer: Three Microtonal Antiphons on Psalm Texts”.

I don’t know what exactly this says about Oxy, but at least we have variety.

Welcome Back!

The Occidental Music Library is pleased to welcome back all Oxy students, staff and faculty for the 2010-11 academic year, and to wish everyone good luck on the transition back to school work. Starting today, the Music library is going to be open on it’s regular schedule (M-Th 9am-10pm, F 9am-5pm, Sa 12pm-5pm, Su 1pm-10pm), so feel free to drop by to check out our selections of scores and songs, do some studying (with AC!), or just say hello. Also, a special welcome to the incoming class of 2014, and to the class of 2010, we miss you already.

Best wishes and warmest regards from all of us here at the Oxy Music Library. Good luck on the new semester, and we look forward to seeing you soon!

-The Staff

Rocking in Place

To help everyone take a break from studying and working hard, I thought I'd dig up one of my all-time favorite music videos. It's really got everything. A great song, a great haircut on David Byrne, a lot of running in place. It may not be technically possible for me to miss the 80's, but I really miss the 80's. So, for everyone out there stressing themselves out over getting ready for finals lean back, take a deep breath, and relax with the Talking Heads.

Your Brain on Music

(Or: Why I should never be a science major.)

For my Blog post today, I decided to try to research why it is that Music has such a strong pull on us as people, why a string of notes can conjure so many disparate emotions, from joy to the depths of sorrow. After reading through a number of overly complicated journals and underly complicated websites, I’ve been forced to draw one conclusion. I don’t know why Music does this. And, further, no one seems to know why music has this power. On a very simple level, listening music seems to, unlike almost any other activity, cause both halves of your brain to flare up, causing increased activity everywhere in your brain. And good music seems to cause a release of dopamine, the same chemical the brain releases when you shoot heroin or have sex. Music you don’t like, conversely, can go so far as to trigger the part of your medulla which controls the fight-or-flight reflex, and can seriously harm your mental faculties. After all, the CIA drove General Noriega out of his base by playing almost 36 hours of nonstop AC/DC. In summary, then? The research for this blog may have been a failure. But yet, I think there’s some value in this failure. Music has an amazing and miraculous effect on the human mind. And why it does this? Maybe it’s better that we never know.

Baseball, America and Apple Pie

In the spirit of the first day of the Baseball Season (for those of you who aren’t from New York or Boston), I decided to do a little bit of digging into the perennial ballpark favorite and eyewateringly hokey piece of Americana “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. It turns out the cracker-jack ridden song was actually written for a Vaudeville routine in 1908, by two men in New York, neither of whom had ever attended a baseball game. The full song is much longer and a good deal less catchy, and includes a few verses about a female fan in the stands, doing such ballpark-friendly activities as fretting, pouting, and knowing the players names. The whole thing gets somewhat less interesting from there. However, when the song started being played at ballparks in the 1920’s, the sale of the generally unknown candy corn “Cracker Jacks” went completely through the roof. Today, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is the third most recognizable song in America, after “Happy Birthday” and “The Star Spangled Banner”. And hey, they turned the song into a movie with Frank Sinatra!

Tec 12

While digging through old instruction manuals in the library today, I came across some information on the Music Library’s very own “Technics Quartz Direct Drive Turntable SL-1200 MK2“, otherwise known as that turntable along the back wall. Turns out that very same turntable has been made by Technics since 1972, and has sold over 3 million copies. The SL-1200, or "Tec 12" was central to the development of hip hop, the earliest hip-hop DJ’s using the Tec 12 almost exclusively because of it’s high quality and relatively low cost. The entire system of “breaks” (the part of a disco, funk or hip-hop song where the music “breaks” away, leaving only the drums and, occasionally, the bass) was probably developed on a Tec 12. In fact, the Tec 12 has been so central to the development of moderjn music that the London Science Museum has one on display as one of the great inventions that shaped the modern world. So, find something to spin and come down to the music library. Try something that is truly a part of pop history.

As We Speak: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

For my first post on the Oxy Music Library’s blog, I thought I’d try to report on something as up to date and poignant as I possibly could. Well, some might argue poignant is a too strong word for the Rock and Roll hall of fame. However, they are inducting the class of 2010 Right Now (as I write this!), and it’s a pretty heavy hitting class. Genesis, Jimmy Cliff, The Stooges and, surprisingly, ABBA. It looks like even the Rock and Roll hall of fame wasn’t enough to get ABBA over it’s fussing and feuding, and they won’t all be in attendance for the show, let alone putting together a live set like Genesis, Jimmy Cliff and the Stooges. For anyone who questions the validity of the Rock and Roll hall of fame, A 62 year old shirtless Iggy Pop just referred to Billie Joe Armstrong and Eddie Vedder as “some kid[s]”. While you can argue over the validity or the importance of the Rock and Roll hall of fame, there is still something very cool about anything that can pull together a Wyclef John-Jimmy Cliff duet, or drag one of the most influential front-men of all time on stage to hassle the leading rockstars of today.