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musescore-com · 6 years ago

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MuseScorer of the month: Takernikov

And here comes August’s MuseScorer of the Month!

In case you missed it, each month we pick one of MuseScore.com’s brilliant members, featuring him or her in an interview available to all MuseScorers. Last month we introduced you to flutist and composer Robin M. Butler.

Now, please welcome: the MuseScorer Of August, Takeru aka Takernikov from Fukuoka, Japan.

“I love the words of my professor at the university. He said, that good music has ‘consistency’ and ‘variety’; If no consistency, it would be confusing. If no variety, it’d be boring.”

The following interview is featuring Takeru and is conducted by our staff member Alexander T.

- Hi, Takeru.It’s a pleasure to meet you! Tell our readers, please, a few words about yourself.

Hello, Alexander, nice to meet you too. Well, I’m from Fukuoka, northern side of Kyushu island, Japan, and live in this city with my wife and a little son (three years old right now). I studied acoustic design at the university, i.e. solving room acoustic issues with physics. Actually I wanted to study at conservatory but my musical skills were not good enough to pass the examination. Luckily, I had an opportunity to take composing classes at the university. So, I learnt music theory, notation, how to compose, and musical forms like sonata.Now, I’ve been an IT engineer specialized in networks for a decade, I like this job. My experience as a musician includes playing: - tuba, double bass and clarinet at high-school; - bassoon and contrabassoon at university; - piano - since I turned 15 years old.

- Cool, such a variety of instruments ! Did you come a long way to learn playing them?

Actually I was kinda tone deaf when in junior high school. There were lotta choral classes sadly, the music teacher pointed out my tone deafness every time, some students teased me. But, finally, I overcame that so-called “tone deafness”; I got interested in music, I began to play piano, which had been bought by my mother when she got married. Then, I played in a brass band in high school. As far as I remember, at some point I came across a really attracting piece called “El Camino Real”. First time I saw the score, I was confused about the key signature for transposing instruments, but I found my own way to read it. The skill I got at that time has helped me a lot later, when studying from the other composer’s work. I was also playing contrabass for a year, clarinet for two months and tuba for about two years. When I entered university, as I have already said, I began to play bassoon and contrabassoon in the “Orchestra club”. I’ve played symphonies (Brahms No.1, 4, Beethoven No.5, 7, 9, Tchaikovsky No.5, 6, Rachmaninoff No.1, 2, Dvorak No.5, 7, 8, 9, Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, and so on), overtures and suites. I tried to perform in a rock band as a keyboard player, but sadly it wasn’t good…

- But, anyway, trying something different is always (or almost always) a nice experience...Well, let’s talk about your composing experience: what is that about for you, and what or who helped you to start composing?

Apart from the composing classes at the university, I took part in picking musical pieces for upcoming concerts as a member of the council of the university orchestra (I was a leading bassoon player). We listened to all of the ‘candidate’ scores to decide whether they are playable for our orchestra, worthwhile or not. So,I read a lot of scores from Bach to Shostakovich. Especially I’ve been curious about the orchestration, I tried to understand, how do composers notate their music to make it sound really nice and beautiful.

At first, I tried to compose something with Finale when in the university, about eleven years ago, but quitted composing after I graduated. As I dislike using a mouse, I felt it was inefficient to notate with drag and drop, so I lost some motivation. Then, when I was searching for sheet music from Final Fantasy XV soundtrack for piano, I came across this amazing MuseScore notation program. I remember, that I was greatly impressed by the features MuseScore had (and still has, of course). It has intuitive UI for me, mostly I can notate with keyboard quickly as if writing a document. Till that day I hadn’t composed a piece for about ten years. But now almost everything motivates me to compose, but especially natural landscapes or some exercises (sports) I did or things happened to me...

- ...and now, as I can see, you’ve got a plenty of your own pieces on MuseScore.com Can you describe at least some of them?

All-right. Let’s start with Snow Run - one Sunday morning I did a trail run with friends through an urban forest park and some ranch, the duration of the 3D map movie generated by my GPS log data on the run was 52 seconds, so I decided to compose this piece in 2/4, 52 measures with 120 bpm to make it easy to count. Composed this piece within an hour or so - I realized I could compose quicker than imagined...

- Sorry for interrupting, but I wonder - do you often compose these “GPS-log” pieces after your morning runs, and is that the only reason why most of your compositions are short?

Basically there are two reasons for that: 1: you are right about the “GPS compositions”: after I do some endurance exercise like cycling or running, there’s some service which can create some short movies by my GPS logs. Usually the duration of the movies are short, less than 1-2 minutes; I compose for this ‘movies’ on the same day and share with my friends. 2: I said “compose on the same day”. I set a deadline for myself and try to accomplish that on time. Kind of repetitive practices, it’s a good way to express my feelings and to ‘improve productivity’ in my opinion. I feel, this affects even my job activity in a good way as well.

- So, let’s continue with your compositions…

Ok, then I’ll tell you about a couple more. La Chute D'eau élargi - inspired by French impressionists, deliberately titled in French, however, it includes some pentatonic scales, so for me it sounds like some Japanese folk music. Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa - an attempt to create minimal music from my original phrases I came up with, after I was reading a picture book for my son. That sounds a little weird, but I ended up with clear and refreshing atmosphere in this piece.

- Nice pieces, the second one reminded me of Steve Reich. And now, here is our “traditional” question: what have you shared on MuseScore.com that you’re most proud of (and why are you proud of it) ?

It’s Symphonic Poem “Mamacoco”. This is the most emotional and dramatic one I have ever composed. Although I’m generally a short piece composer, the duration of this one is about 14min. and it contains almost everything I could do as a composer. Attempted to fill it with beautiful melodies and counterpoints in the tonal slow part, and to make it exciting in the quasi-atonal fast part, naturally “covered” the previous slow melodies with different instruments (brass). I was surprised what I did actually, huge resolution followed by very tensed atmosphere before the recapitulation. The last part starts with almost sad flute’s phrase, it gradually changes to a kind of brilliant sounding.

Symphonic Poem “Mamacoco” by Takernikov

- I love the melodies in it, for me “Mamacoco” sounds like ‘pastoral’ music. I wonder what composers/performers influenced you. And, generally, what are your favorites?

I love Russian composers Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and that’s why my MuseScore account name is “Takernikov”, like a Russian surname. I don’t mean that I’m limited by the Romantic era, I also respect Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Debussy, Ravel, Liszt, even Steve Reich. In film composing, Hans Zimmer is the first composer that comes to my mind. Generally, most of the film composers affected me: James Horner, Steve Jablonsky, Joe Hisaishi, Ryuichi Sakamoto, etc..Honestly saying, the composer I can’t even imitate is Don Davis. His music, especially the orchestration and atonality in it, is outstanding in my opinion.

Would like to admit, that Takernikov is the first composer I met, whose beautiful music is often inspired by morning runs and whose pieces’ length really depend on the time he devoted to his physical exercises. That’s an interesting fact and Takeru is a really nice composer, it was a pleasure for me to do this interview and to meet him.

Thank you, guys, for reading.

Yours, Alexander T.

P.S. Following the nice tradition - I am adding here a piece I really enjoyed , this is a kind of “spanish sketch” composed by Mr.Takernikov.

Él irá a España by Takernikov

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sunshiny-studies · 7 years ago

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Hello - Introduction

I just made this studyblr in an effort to stay motivated and productive during the school year so here we go

some info about me:

-my name is Rowan

-i’m trans so this is not my birth name But it IS my name (just wanted to say in case you see my name on pictures I post)

-i’m 15

-sophomore in high school (10th grade)

Classes I’m taking:

•Guitar

•Humanities 10 (combo of english and social studies)

•Honors Algebra 2

•Health

•French 2

•Life Science 10

I like:

Voltron, Heathers, Criminal Minds, Doctor Who, creative writing, art, animals, the color yellow, impressionist art, music

#studyblr #introduction #introductory post #studyspo

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nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

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Hyperallergic: Parsing a Performance Art Festival in Terms of Labor and Ritual

Audrey Phibel, “Time is Love” (2017), from the FIAP festival (all photos by Jean Baptiste Barret and courtesy Artincidence)

FORT-DE-FRANCE, Martinique — After witnessing a week of exuberant and enigmatic performances at the first International Festival of Performance Art (FIAP), mounted by Artincidence, I thought most of them could be understood in terms of one of two categories: work or ritual. Sometimes they were both. But most of the time they diverged, with one key difference: either the artists gave themselves particular tasks to accomplish or puzzles to solve, or they used an emotional script or set choreography to guide their actions.

To illustrate this difference, consider a statue of Joséphine de Beauharnais, the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte and first empress of France, located in the park across the street from my hotel in Fort-de-France. Because Joséphine influenced Napoleon to bring back the practice of slavery within the French Caribbean, some native islanders cut off the statue’s head about 20 years ago (which is still missing), spilled red paint on her neck, and roughly chiseled her name off the base of the statue, looking to erase her pernicious memory. One type of performance artist would have precisely taken those actions, asserting their agency against the statue; the other type might’ve lead a candlelit procession, with a performer standing in for Joséphine and ritually dying. This is not to say that one form of performance is better or more compelling than the other — rather, the distinction clarifies how performance can construct meaning for the viewer.

Ayana Evans, “Jumping Backwards” (2017)

Ayana Evans, for example, presented pieces that were both made by her own labor and specifically about a kind of feminine labor. In “Jumping Backwards” (2017), the first of two pieces she performed wearing her signature neon, tiger-print cat suit and black pumps with heels, she tried to fashion jump ropes out of a string of Christmas lights and invited audience members to both turn the ropes and jump. The ceiling was too low, so these actions proved abortive, though their potential for play was apparent. Her second piece, “Sparkles” (2017), involved laying down on a red plastic tarp to make an ersatz carpet she encouraged people to walk on, then peeling off her cat suit down to her underwear and then washing herself with a sponge dipped into a bowl of water mixed with Palmolive soap. Each piece by Evans references the various exercises and preparations some women go through to control their own bodies and make them more attractive.

In a different example of performance as work or labor, Nancy Gewolb, in “Alzheimer” (2017), was brought out on stage wrapped in a cocoon of pink fabric, of which she slowly and deliberately cut her way out with a knife. I could see her pause at times with the effort to get out of that mummified fate. Jill McDermid also employed a knife in her performance. In between intermittently beating on a drum in time with a musician seated on the stage with her, she sandwiched a large American flag in the ceiling pipes above her and carefully cut the flag into strips. It left that symbol of this nation in tatters — an accurate representation of what this country feels like for many in the artist community. Seeing this kind of labor had the effect of making me aware of this individual as a volitional vehicle of agency: one who sees the world and can act on it.

Nancy Gewolb, “Alzheimer” (2017)

Hector Canonge, “Tropicalismus” (2017)

On the other end of the spectrum were performers who interpreted historical or personal events, and this work was generally more abstract and impressionistic. Audrey Phibel’s visually stunning procession down the street wearing thigh-high boots, fishnet stockings, a black jacket, and a feathered headdress while handing out of flowers and balloons felt both funereal and celebratory. His “Time is Love” (2017) was mostly about presentation, about costuming and pomp and circumstance that moved beyond mere theatricality to a shared impulse to celebrate and revere those who are just outside of the norm.

Hector Canonge’s half-naked obeisance to his ancestors, gods, or ideals in his piece “Tropicalismus” (2017) demonstrated the power of the penitential ritual. He evoked the sense of how we are often made prostrate before an idea of equality — spelling out the French word “égalité” in flower petals on the floor — while the fulfillment of the idea nevertheless eludes us. Lastly, seeking to come into dialogue with Martinique’s local history, Nyugen Smith in his “Untitled” (2017) seemed to play out of the role of colonizer. Accompanied by students from the local art school who sang and wailed the folk songs indigenous to Martinique, he loudly demanded a coffee and gazed at his own reflection in the mirror — ever the narcissist treating the native people around him as props existing only in his own drama.

Jill McDermid tearing the flag to shreds in “Untitled” (2017)

As a teacher’s assistant for the artist and curator Deborah Oliver for her performance studies classes at UC Irvine, I recall her emphasizing the need for performance artists to give themselves tasks to accomplish, particular chores to complete (such as washing oneself from head to toe) so that they didn’t fall into the pit of acting. So I’ve learned to value labor, the physical missions that impel one to cut the head off an offending public symbol or display the interiority of one’s feelings about one’s country. But after seeing the performances at this festival, I saw other conduits to meaning — how ritual and quotidian acts can be made larger and more significant when staged. In the end, I was shown how performance artists place unique trust in the moment, and have the ability to enter that moment and stay with it. They make discoveries as they place their bodies in dialogue with their surroundings; as the poet Theodore Roethke wrote, they “learn by going where to go.”

The first edition of the International Festival of Performance Art (FIAP) was held at the Hôtel L’Impératrice (15 Rue De La Liberté, Fort-de-France, Martinique) April 17–April 23.

Editor’s note: The author’s travel expenses and accommodations were paid for by the International Festival of Performance Art.

The post Parsing a Performance Art Festival in Terms of Labor and Ritual appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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arthisour-blog · 8 years ago

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Jules Bastien-Lepage (Nov 1, 1848 – Dec 10, 1884) was a French painter closely associated with the beginning of naturalism, an artistic style that emerged from the later phase of the Realist movement.

Bastien-Lepage was born in the village of Damvillers, Meuse, and spent his childhood there. Bastien’s father grew grapes in a vineyard to support the family. His grandfather also lived in the village; his garden had fruit trees of apple, pear, and peach up against the high walls. Bastien took an early liking to drawing, and his parents fostered his creativity by buying prints of paintings for him to copy.

Jules Bastien-Lepage’s first teacher was his father, himself an artist. His first formal training was at Verdun, and prompted by a love of art he went to Paris in 1867, where he was admitted to the École des Beaux-arts, working under Cabanel. He was awarded first place for drawing but spent most of his time working alone, only occasionally appearing in class. Nevertheless, he completed three years at the école. In a letter to his parents, he complained that the life model was a man in the pose of a mediaeval lutanist. During the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, Bastien fought and was wounded. After the war, he returned home to paint the villagers and recover from his wound. In 1873 he painted his grandfather in the garden, a work that would bring the artist his first success at the Paris Salon.

After exhibiting works in the Salons of 1870 and 1872 which attracted no attention, in 1874 his Portrait of my Grandfather garnered critical acclaim and received a third-class medal. He also showed Song of Spring, an academically-oriented study of rural life, representing a peasant girl sitting on a knoll above a village, surrounded by wood nymphs.

His initial success was confirmed in 1875 by the First Communion, a picture of a little girl minutely worked up in manner that was compared to Hans Holbein[disambiguation needed], and a Portrait of M. Hayern. In 1875 he took second place in the competition for the Prix de Rome with his Angels appearing to the Shepherds, exhibited again at the Exposition Universelle in 1878. His next attempt to win the Prix de Rome in 1876 with Priam at the Feet of Achilles was again unsuccessful (it is in the Lille gallery), and the painter determined to return to country life. To the Salon of 1877 he sent a full-length Portrait of Lady L. and My Parents; and in 1878 a Portrait of M. Theuriet and Haymaking (Les Foins). The last picture, now in the Musée d’Orsay, was widely praised by critics and the public alike. It secured his status as one of the first painters in the Naturalist school.

After the success of Haymaking, Bastien-Lepage was recognized in France as the leader of the emerging Naturalist school. By 1883, a critic could proclaim that “The whole world paints so much today like M. Bastien-Lepage that M. Bastien-Lepage seems to paint like the whole world.” This fame brought him prominent commissions. His Portrait of Mlle Sarah Bernhardt (1879), painted in a light key, won him the cross of the Legion of Honour. In 1879 he was commissioned to paint the Prince of Wales. In 1880 he exhibited a small portrait of M. Andrieux and Joan of Arc listening to the Voices (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art); and in the same year, at the Royal Academy, the little portrait of the Prince of Wales. In 1881 he painted The Beggar and the Portrait of Albert Wolf; in 1882 Le Père Jacques; in 1885 Love in a Village, in which we find some trace of Gustave Courbet’s influence. His last dated work is The Forge (1884).

Between 1880 and 1883 he traveled in Italy. The artist, long ailing, had tried in vain to re-establish his health in Algiers. He died in Paris in 1884, when planning a new series of rural subjects. His friend, Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch, was with him at the end and wrote,

“At last he was unable to work anymore; and he died on the 10th of December, 1884, breathing his last in my arms. At his grave’s head his mother and brother planted an apple-tree.

In March and April 1885, more than 200 of his pictures were exhibited at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1889 some of his best-known work was shown at the Paris Exposition Universelle. Among his more important works, may also be mentioned the portrait of Mme J. Drouet (1883); Gambetta on his death-bed, and some landscapes; The Vintage (1880), and The Thames at London (1882). The Little Chimney-Sweep was never finished. A museum is devoted to him at Montmédy. A statue of Bastien-Lepage by Rodin was erected in Damvillers. An obituary by Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch, appeared in the Magazine of Art (Cassell) in 1890.

The influential English critic Roger Fry credited the wider public’s acceptance of the Impressionists, especially Claude Monet, to Bastien-Lepage. In his 1920 Essay in Æsthetics, Fry wrote: Monet is an artist whose chief claim to recognition lies in the fact of his astonishing power of faithfully reproducing certain aspects of nature, but his really naive innocence and sincerity was taken by the public to be the most audacious humbug, and it required the teaching of men like Bastien-Lepage, who cleverly compromised between the truth and an accepted convention of what things looked like, to bring the world gradually around to admitting truths which a single walk in the country with purely unbiassed vision would have established beyond doubt.

Ukrainian-born painter Marie Bashkirtseff formed a close friendship with Bastien-Lepage. Artistically, she took her cue from the French painter’s admiration for nature: “I say nothing of the fields because Bastien-Lepage reigns over them as a sovereign; but the streets, however, have not still had their… Bastien”. Her best-known work in this naturalist vein is A Meeting (now in the Musée d’Orsay), which was shown to wide acclaim at the Salon of 1884. By a curious coincidence she succumbed to chronic illness the same year as her mentor.

Jules Bastien-Lepage was originally published on HiSoUR Art Collection

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