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Kevin
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Jan 17, 2012 • My friend Rachel Fershleiser, newly of tumblr, said this: Think piece I don’t have the energy to write but maybe you do: Internet memes seem to be moving towards the smallest sub-cultural groups possible and catching on that way. - I made Judgmental Bookseller Ostrich as a joke on how there was starting to be...
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Kevin
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Jan 15, 2012 • Thank you, thank you, thank you to the two dozen or so people (I never got an accurate head count) who performed in the show, filmed it, recorded it, served fantastic cocktails, and yes, carried a disassembled marimba around in travel bags. We had one hell of a day, starting with loading in and lunch,...
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Kevin
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Jan 13, 2012 • One of my proudest accomplishments is the creation and institutionalization of the Junior Bach program at Peabody. In it, Peabody composers teach middle school students from the St. Ignatius Loyola Academy, and prepare them for the first world premieres of their lives. The Academy itself is Jesuit, and draws its students, all boys, from the...
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Kevin
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Jan 12, 2012 • I have a rule about this. It has broader implications, but for me it starts from putting on shows. And it’s this: Always Carry Drums. Here’s what I mean. If you’re putting on a show, and you’re not a drummer, at some point you’re going to be standing around, having totally finished “your bit” of...
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Kevin
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Jan 9, 2012 • This is going to be a wonderfully mad show. I’ve been looking forward to the day when the team behind No Signal got back together with some new friends in New York and put on shows again, and that time is finally upon us. This Saturday, 8 PM, at the Exapno New Music Community Center,...
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Kevin
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Jan 4, 2012 • I got it wrong about the favors. In my last post I talked about exchanging favors, and owed debts for previous non-monetary transactions. I wanted to connect it to stuff previously done with money, and I mistakenly thought about it as an exchange of value in far too concrete a sense. It’s been haunting me...
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Kevin
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Dec 19, 2011 • This morning, Diane Ragsdale linked a great TED talk from 2005 in her brilliant-as-usual post on institutions supporting artists at her ArtsJournal blog, Jumper. Diane’s post is great, but I want to react mainly to the TED talk. Yes, it’s six years old. That’s why the video’s so SD looking and the speaker, Clay Shirky...
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Kevin
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Dec 14, 2011 • You’ve probably already heard about this. Hilarious and vulgar-but-never-mean comedian Louis CK directed, edited, and published his own stand-up special without a big production company. Sold it just online. $5, no restrictions. Much cheaper than the $20 region-restricted DVD a big publisher would have released. We’re three days from release now and he’s already made...
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Kevin
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Dec 7, 2011 • Last night I went over to Ian Rosenbaum‘s place, and we went over some of the sketches I’ve got for the new scene 1 of Summer’s Twilight. As usual with a marimba part, you think some things are hard when they’re easy, and you think some things are easy but they’re hard. Sometimes you take...
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Kevin
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Dec 3, 2011 • I wanted to tell you guys about this brilliant piece of practice session/marketing/bringing in the audience that Amanda Palmer did, and I thought I’d try out storify to help with the whole embedding-a-ton-of-tweets thing. Let me know how it works! Also, how much do you love the phrase “party on the internet” for these live...
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Kevin
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Nov 29, 2011 • This is my first cocktail recipe in a while. In part that’s because of Thanksgiving and the associated craziness, in part it’s because of visiting people and throwing parties and not being at home to invent things, and in part it’s just because my prior recipe for bourbon and non-alcoholic apple cider is just so...
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Kevin
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Nov 28, 2011 • I entered this discussion from the point where it causes me personal discomfort: when discussing my career, my art and my work with more quantitative people, I sometimes confront the opinion that what I do is easy, or that I am missing something because I’m on the artsy side of the arts/science divide. (Matt Dunnam...
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