I write music that tells stories. I use literature, theater, marimbas, cellos and plenty of jokes.

I also produce creative projects for film, theater and web. And I blog about the future of the arts. And cocktails.

By day I work as Communications Manager at New Music USA.

Audience Collaboration
Connection Wealth for Artists

Connection Wealth for Artists

So, social connection and money both solve similar coordination problems. And for a couple centuries doing economics meant you could basically ignore the social connection category of wealth, because it was a pain in the ass to analyze and it wasn’t that powerful, really. But now there are a ton more social connections and those...
Artists Should Invest in Love

Artists Should Invest in Love

Apple has a ton of money. As their business grew, they kept a lot of it as a long term investment. They didn’t invest it in hedge funds or anything like that. They held onto it partly because Steve Jobs was kinda weird, but partly because all that money gave them safety and flexibility. They...
Learn Kickstarter from AFP's new campaign

Learn Kickstarter from AFP’s new campaign

Because really, there’s only so long you can go on a blog about the future of the arts and the internet without blogging about Amanda Palmer. That’s her new Kickstarter video down there. Back it. Buy it. Love it. But more to the point: THAT’S HOW YOU DO THAT. I spend a lot of time...
Money and the Internet

Money and the Internet

I’ve written before about how things that used to involve money and companies, and therefore appear in “the economy”, no loger have to do so, thanks to the internet. If I needed a place to crash in a strange city, I used to have to pay a hotel. Now I can use all these lovely...
Poems Without Names- full score

Poems Without Names- full score

I’ve never done this with a piece before, but I’m doing it now. I finished Poems Without Names last night, and emailed the score off to the performers and the poet, Burton Raffel. I really hope he likes it. What I’m doing is this: Here’s the full score of Poems Without Names Let me know...
I'm almost recovered from Twenty Four Magazine

I’m almost recovered from Twenty Four Magazine

But not quite. Last Thursday a bunch of us started making a magazine from scratch in twenty-four hours. We didn’t sleep. We invented strange things and threw them together and hoped the turned out. I wrote two songs and an article that made it into the final magazine. It’s actually quite strange to write music...
I'm in a room with some brilliant people

I’m in a room with some brilliant people

And we’re making a magazine in 24 hours. I’m probably going to write some music to be printed in a magazine, which is pretty exciting. I’m also doing some collaborative philosophy of language, which should be fun. I want to analyze the concept of “Awesome”. It’s got a technical meaning on the internet these days,...
Kickstart the Brooklyn Bridge?

Kickstart the Brooklyn Bridge?

Government is the name we give to the things we choose to do together. -Barney Frank Christine Quinn delivers State of the City speech. She calls for NYC govt to use @kickstarter to fund civic projects twitter.com/ystrickler/sta… — Yancey Strickler (@ystrickler) February 9, 2012 The world hasn’t changed yet, but it’s going to. Nation states...
Culture has to be a party now

Culture has to be a party now

And that could look like a bad thing, but on balance I think it’s great. People have vastly more choice about what culture and entertainment to consume with their time than they did in the past. And they can get all the films, tv shows and music they like from home, plus all the stuff...
Sketching Poems Without Names

Sketching Poems Without Names

Here’s my first sketch with actual noteheads in it for Poems Without Names. I can’t believe that this piece is going to be done and performed on St. Patrick’s day. I’m using a lot of the same techniques from The Seafarer and from The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, but instead of a solo performer,...
These YouTube Videos Are Part of my Libretto

These YouTube Videos Are Part of my Libretto

There aren’t any words, but they’re part of a script, not a performance. I’ve talked before about the dumbshow at the beginning of Summer’s Twilight. I don’t want to write a vamp with a few sound effects to be played underneath the mime. I want to score the physical beats of the scene, moment for...
The Favor Economy

The Favor Economy

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...