The Fredösphere

Don't miss Trailers From Hell, a link I got from 2Blowhards. It's old trailers from films good and so-bad-their-good. It's got the trailer for Colossus: The Forbin Project, a sci-fi movie I'm fond of because I stumbled across it by accident on TV one Sunday afternoon. I found the evil computer to be hilarious; my experience as a programmer told me no giant hardware/software development project done with minimal testing will ever, ever result in a system that has more capability than the designer intended. No, not more, and almost certainly much less. I'm more forgiving now of these sci-fi classics, being more aware of how bad the truly bad stuff is, so I'd like to see the movie again.

In other artsy-geeksy news, Alex Ross links to nerdcore artist Bad Spellah and his take on that classic of speculative fiction, Wagner's Ring.

I met yesterday with choral conductor Brian Altevogt of Concordia University here in Ann Arbor. He gave me a fresh round of suggestions for improving my latest opus, The Prophet, a setting of a poem by Pushkin (translated with verve and élan by Babette Deutsch). Brian's ideas were all good as usual, and it's a privilege to work with an interpreter so deeply engaged in the creative process from beginning to end. It's also nice to hear my music played with feeling, something I don't get from my midi keyboard. Thanks to Brian's play-throughs, I come away from these meetings with increased optimism. Brian's latest plan is to perform The Prophet with his choir on November 4, at the Chapel of the Holy Trinity on Concordia's campus. Mark your calendars.

Labels: Composition, sci-fi