Avi Amon

Sarah Vaughan - Speak Low (Music by Kurt Weill, Lyrics by Ogden Nash)

This song.  Right now.

Speak low when you speak, love
Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon
Speak low when you speak, love
Our moment is swift, like ships adrift, we’re swept apart, too soon

Speak low, darling, speak low
Love is a spark, lost in the dark too soon, too soon
I feel wherever I go that tomorrow is near,
tomorrow is here and always too soon

Time is so old and love so brief
Love is pure gold and time a thief

We’re late, darling, we’re late
The curtain descends, ev’rything ends too soon, too soon
I wait, darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me, speak love to me and soon

Photos from ‘Tasked Phenomenology’

Tasked Phenomenology

Here’s a piece of sound design/sculpture that I worked on for a dance that went up this past weekend (pictures soon). While the dance was, in theory, about nothing, it was also about attempting and failing to complete a task. Our choreographers didn’t want any pitch or rhythm, so we relied on texture and density to help create a story. My collaborators and I sampled sounds of people performing tasks (scratching, opening a squeaky door, using hand-sanitizer, etc.) from around the city, and modified them until they became unrecognizable. Then we had fun layering and tinkering in Logic until we came up with what you hear above.

The dancers didn’t actually hear this - nor had we seen much of the dance - until the dress-rehearsal, so watching it come together was pleasantly surprising. At the time it might have been a bit stressful, but looking back, I think it was very cool to create things in a vacuum and let the art just work itself out.  AND it was nice to get out of the “traditional” composition world I’ve been living in for the past year.  

Choreographers: Erika Barbee, Ben Freedman, Carissa M. Landes
Composers: Avi Amon, Nikko Benson, Julia Gytri 
Set design: Stephan Moravski
Lighting: Vadim Ledvin
Costumes: Izzy Fields
Performers: Louisa Barta, Stanton Jacinto, Nick Katen, Catherine Kirk, Jayne Paley

Istanbul Tango - Music by Avi Amon

I wrote this for for my music tutorial when I was visiting my grandparents in Turkey.  Astor Piazzola was the inspiration but there’s different harmonic stuff going on in there.  We had some great musicians playing for this past weekend’s dance+music collaboration.  I’ll have pictures and audio up from that, soon.

I think a lot of young composers corner themselves into writing music that does this or that technical or harmonic thing, but we forget to think about piece’s playability or fun-level. This was a cool opportunity to write, receive feedback, and rearrange on the fly. Not a perfect recording, but who cares. You don’t get free access to pro musicians everyday…

Dirty Loops - Cover of Adele’s, Rolling in the Deep

Literally, this forever. Damn they’re good.

Yeah, these are pretty cool.

bestrooftalkever:

Director Tom Kuntz, the guy responsible for almost all of your favorite commercials of the last few years, has launched a new site full of some eclectic mixtapes created by he and his friends.

Worth checking out. (some album art slightly nsfw)

Officially a place on Foursquare, NBD.

We’ve got some killer check-in specials, yo.

Jenny & Tyler - Little Balloon

Hey friends, watch and listen to my friends.  Video quality is killer, too!

This is my 1000th Tumblr post.

Grandma, on the Phone (Taken in Istanbul, Turkey)

Jenny & Tyler’s New album, Open Your Doors, is out today!!

They are the two of the most creative and passionate people I know.  Support their music, causes, and love.  Buy/listen here.

take me back.

EN2NE Salutes: March Madness!

Black Earth / Kara Toprak - Fazıl Say

Beautiful piano work.  From the video’s description:

Black Earth was inspired by Kara Toprak, a popular song in Turkey. The composer of the song, Aşık Veysel (1891-1973), was one of the last great Turkish balladeers and the final link in a thousand-year tradition.

Veysel went blind during childhood following an attack of smallpox. He subsequently began to learn to play the Saz, a Turkish lute, and to study poetry, initially for his own amusement. He made acquaintance with a variety of folk poets, and, after 1928, also travelled from village to village with his songs. Through the years, he became a cultural symbol of the Turkish Republic.

In the song Kara Toprak, Veysel describes loneliness and loss. All that remains is the Black Earth, the color of the landscape in his native town of Sivas.

Fazil Say imitates the sound of the Saz through his selection of a muted effect in the Introduction and Epilogue of Black Earth - a meditation on the themes of a ballad. In contrast, folklore, Romantic piano style and jazz are entwined in the central sections to form a large-scale outburst. Fazil Say performs this works in both concerts of classical music and a jazz festivals: particularly in the folkloristic sections, he employs the improvisatory freedom which is inherent to both folk music and jazz.

(via my mom)

Today.

This is a perfect representation of my trip to Turkey thus far.

And since I know you were wondering, yes, there is another one.  Here.

So this is a thing that happened.

I thought I would be tired of them, but I’m just not.  Awesome.

thedailywhat:

Music Video of the Day: For their latest music video-slash-Chevy Super Bowl ad, OK Go drove down a two-mile stretch of desert lined with 1,000 instruments in a Chevy Sonic fitted with retractable pneumatic arms to perform a very complicated version of “Needing/Getting” that took four months to prep and four days to shoot.

[okgo.]