We lived in Malden, MA for about 7 years and saw a huge amount of change just in that time, and it's cool to see that that's still happening. I miss it a lot!

This is terrible news. One of the most vital ensembles.

Blackboard users D2L users 🤝 what’s going on

I feel like “it’s absolute horses” should refer equally to something good or something bad with its meaning imparted solely through a persons delivery of the line

Primaries are important, too.

Excellent www.pulitzer.org/winners/gabr...

Almost every part of this sentence is cursed.

Reading John Adams's reflections on where Harmonielehre came from

might just repost all my alvin lucier memes

We got approval to hire a visiting assistant professor of musicology, with an August 2026 start date. It's open, but we especially need someone to teach history of pre-1900 music and American popular musics. Please apply or share!

Had to jump at the chance to see this screened in a real theater. Thank god for independent art house theaters.

Haven't been doing much with my website lately and realized it's been a few years since writing a blog post, so I went and checked what's there to raise the dead from any link graves, etc. I kind of like this little post on the Sing Along with Mitch scene in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN:

When my son was in *kindergarten* 2 years ago, he had to tote his computer to and from school every day to charge it at home. That’s not the actual real problem with the computers, but it was patently absurd and super annoying to deal with.

Who decided this was a good way to write poetry translations?

Great stuff

Couldn’t miss a Menotti double bill

LEGO 😍

Aha!

this is such a clear and easily-understood metaphor and it feels completely spot on re: the film. (it's also a good metaphor for why genAI writing is terrible.)

Ah no. His ideas were absolutely formative for me. What a loss.

Has a journalist (or anyone) ever asked this man to justify his job or him having it? Like it definitely seems like a job that can be done cheaper by ChatGPT.

There’s a line in this that is beyond parody: “AI’s not the enemy, it’s the key”

So good

Found on my door this morning. Looks like I was visited by the chromatic scale trichord set classes fairy last night and I still don’t know what to make of it.

The "disaffected" part of my bio is in no small part because of this dude. Does so much that is anathema to what Montanans claim to believe in, particularly re: public lands.

Lemme go back to 1962 when this book was published so I can commission the designer to make this font digital

A problem, tho, is that much of its aspiration was artificial pretense. Lots wasn’t about authentic curiosity. It was about the image of keeping up with the Jonses. To say nothing of who was keeping up. White picket fences and all that. Many middlebrows, but that was a big one. Idk about mourning it

Maybe this is on the nose, but when I was still conducting, I learned a great deal listening to Helmuth Rilling's recording of Brahms's Begräbnisgesang, Op. 13. It's a real gem of a piece, and his clarity with it was so informative in so many ways. RIP. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iBa...

Fabulous program, but can’t disagree more with this reviewer calling the romanza in Clara Schumann’s concerto “insipid.” It’s totally gorgeous and arresting music, imo.

This is such an incredibly heart-wrenching moment of cinema. Jackie Coogan's expression here is so affecting.

Being conscious not to move toward “we did it” complacency, but these kinds of milestones have happened in a few places over the last year, and it’s encouraging

This is craven

Hard to sympathize with Spotify here when they strike a pose of protecting artists

Just started listening to Alex Goldman's Hyperfixed podcast recently and this episode trying to recreate a beloved cake with Claire Saffitz is so good. Kind of a revival/crossover ep with the less problematic cozy-media people from 2020 (from the otherwise doomed Reply All and Bon Appetit).

Delightful to discover Vulfpeck has a video of Clapping Music on their YT channel:

Watched a video someone inside recorded of Alex Honnold waving to people at the top of Taipei 101 just before finishing and my palms started sweating five seconds in. Yikes.

Boris GoodEnough

Every year this part of the Grove entry on Amy Beach sticks out to me and some day I'll find the energy/time to track down where it comes from. It can't be accurate, right? Singing 40 tunes at age 1? Improvising alto lines before 2? Feels a little more than precocity!

Pretty good discussion that reflects my feelings of Stranger Things being a pretty mixed bag in its last season, though not really tainting the earlier seasons. Writers just seemed to mail it in a bit for fan service of some kind

“.. saying that the Trump administration’s policies had ‘shattered’ the confidence of donors and resulted in a 40 percent drop in ticket revenues. “ @nytimes.com #ETTD www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/a...

The latest numbers are in: Congestion pricing cut 27M car trips in 2025. Commutes got faster Streets got safer And business went up See more exclusive analysis - and feedback from 600+readers - in our latest collab with @upshot.nytimes.com Free link: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This is like a Yes, Yes, No to assign to a grad “intro to musicology” course on the first day of class

House style guides will be the death of me.

Well that’s the most adorable thing

So much good stuff coming into the public domain!

The Man with More of a Comment than a Question

I love this cue from WALL-E, but listen to it and tell me you don't hear a little bit of Elman's SIMPSONS theme (at 1m40s, if you want to skip).

Listening to Sibelius symphonies as I write and was completely taken off guard by the excerpt from the 6th that plays when you open the engraving software. Almost dissociated for a moment.

The. Truth. ...though one of the reasons I've stuck with being a Germanist is because they're some of the best digitizers, in my experience. So much stuff that just lives on the cloud that I can't imagine more than me and two other people care about. But I don't ask questions about that.