Praeterita

At the One State Illinois conference that I just attended, one of the most absorbing and inspiring presentations was given by Orbert Davis, who teaches jazz at the University of Chicago, and who is the founder and leader of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic. He began by walking onto the stage, picking up his trumpet, and playing an obbligato, Louis Armstrong-inspired blues for a few minutes. He then gave a talk about the CJP, his creative process, which involves 75% research followed by 25% composing, and the necessity for music education from the earliest years in American schools. He showed some clips of performances by his quintet and the CJP. The one I liked best was his variations on Miles Davis' 'Sketches of Spain'. And here is a You Tube clip I found of him performing it. As I (ahem) 'tweeted' after he'd finished speaking, Mr. Davis deepened my conviction that music is the most profound and the highest expression of art:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a r...

I'm just about to go to the final events at the one State Together in the Arts conference. There is a live stream from the main hall, starting at 10 am American Central Time (GMT minus 6 hours), which I'm embedding here:           Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV Yesterday, I ran into Christina McClelland from the Urbana Arts Program, who awarded me a grant to do a project there later in the year. She was attending this conference, too, so we were able to have a quick meeting to go over some basics about the project: permissions for street interviews, wording for publicity materials, and so on. Urbana is only about 40 miles from Normal, so after the conference ends at noon I'm going over there to take some photos in downtown Urbana, which I can use to think over where I want to install the public art project once it's finished. If you're a Twit, like me, you can follow people's reactions on Twitter using the following hasthtag: #onestateil.   Subs...

The thing about a town that's called Normal? People who live here get the joke, too. There are t-shirts for sale in shops on the short main street that make puns on the name. Like the one I used for the title of this blog post. So it's small town, attached to a place called Bloomington. And when you're at a conference in the ballroom of the local Marriott hotel, the event organisers are at pains to tell you the names of all the companies that are headquartered here, the well-known to fairly well-know people who come from here (artist Elizabeth Murray) or who passed through here (comedian Andy Dick, writer David Foster Wallace). You walk around the town and you see that it is indeed, very quiet, very normal. And it has some interesting buildings here and there, like the gorgeous art deco cinema pictured above. Surrounded, of course, by car parks and 1960s university buildings. Anyway, the conference was very stimulating. 200 creative types from all over Illinois -- arti...