I had to check out from making any posts here for a while, but for good reason. With about 4 weeks lead time, about 6 weeks ago I left Latvia to begin a new teaching position at Full Sail University, a school focussed primarily on digital media arts just outside Orlando, Florida. I’m the Course Director for Music Composition, a newly created position within the MPBS (Bachelor of Science in Music Production) program, itself a newly launched program within Full Sail’s online division. I had to pretty much hit the ground running, but after a month’s time to adapt, I can honestly say I’m having fun teaching again. In the meantime I’ve been trying to furnish my apartment (Overstock, Target, Office Depot, Ikea, Craig’s List… I’ve assembled more home furnishings in this month than my entire life) in anticipation of my family’s arrival from Latvia (Saturday!). Can’t say I’ve experienced much reverse culture-shock, though coming back to American grocery stores was a little strange. Too many choices, not to mention that in Latvia I didn’t have to deal with the notion that a chicken that was not also somehow a cannibal during its short life is here treated as a selling point worthy of an explosion-shaped sticker and a loud font. On the flip side, I’ll never miss Latvia’s the-customer-is-always-wrong mentality. Walking into a Target with a receipt and an item to return with the confidence of knowing there will be no argument is a blessing worth a moment of reflection by us all. Finding the time for creative work has been a bigger challenge at the moment, as I try and squeak in work on a commission from the Colorado State University Percussion Ensemble, also roughly due next week. Gulp. Getting there.
Back to America
Blank Dashboard/Admin page after WP 3.0 upgrade
In case anyone experiences a similar unhappy morning coffee surprise:
I just upgraded my WordPress to version 3.0. I used Automatic Upgrade, and, as one should, I deactivated all plugins before enacting the upgrade. The upgrade was successful, and then I started reactivating the plugins. After activating WP Super Cache, I found myself with a blank Dashboard/Admin screen, something I haven’t experienced before. But at least I was confident about the culprit.
The solution: go into your FTP program and open up the wp-config.php file in the first WordPress folder with a text editor. Then “comment out” the line that defines WP Super Cache.
If you don’t know what that means, about 10 lines into the file’s code, you should find something that looks like this:
define(‘WP_CACHE’, true); //added by yourname on somedate
change it to this (add two hashmarks to the beginning of the line):
//define(‘WP_CACHE’, true); //added by yourname on somedate
and then save the file. That should restore your dashboard.
San Francisco Choral Artists perform Rekviem June 13, 19, 20 in California Bay Area
San Francisco Choral Artists are marking their 25th anniversary season with three concerts, featuring 25 works by 25 composers, directed by Magen Solomon. The program includes my Rekviem, a setting in Russian of a short but beautiful and moving text by Anna Akhmatova.
You can read Ken Bullock’s preview of the program in San Francisco Classical Voice, which describes my piece as “a beautiful requiem — dark, almost threatening.”
SAN FRANCISCO Sunday, June 13, 2010; 4 PM, St. Mark’s Lutheran, 1111 O’Farrell Street, San Francisco
PALO ALTO Saturday, June 19, 2010; 8 PM, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 600 Colorado Avenue, Palo Alto
OAKLAND Sunday, June 20, 2010; 4 PM, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Avenue, Oakland
New Music Incubator: June 8-13
With funding from Nordic Culture Point and the Swedish Music Information Centre, the first Baltic/Scandinavian incarnation of the New Music Incubator kicks off on June 8 at Jurnieka Ligdza (The Sailor’s Nest), a small, charming, family-run hotel just south of Liepaja, Latvia and a stone’s throw from the Baltic Sea.
17 musicians and composers and new media artists, coming from Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Denmark will come together for a week of creative experimentation where the lines between composition, improvisation and performance become blurred as new pieces are collaboratively created and premiered daily.
The idea for this particular incarnation of NMI arose from my meeting the Swedish composer Martin Q Larsson at a conference in Helsinki in 2008. He and Swedish guitarist/lutenist Patrik Karlsson have run several of these NMIs in Sweden and also in the UK. I went to last year’s NMI as a participant, and will join Martin and Patrik in managing the project this week.
Functions, Objects & Arrays in Processing
As part of my exploration of the program Processing, I’ve been trying to work out the differences between Functions, Objects, and Arrays. In this first example, I made a car Function, where I can basically use one Function that describes the size of the rectangle to draw, and the relationship of the ‘wheels’ to the body of the car. I can make the color independent and here I call the car function three times, each with a different color. I can also offset the placement of the three cars, but since all three are tied to the same function, they move at the same speed, at the same distance from each other.
Rather than treating the car as a function, I can make a car object. This allows me to make as many cars as I like, all moving independently. I also decided to animate the yellow stripe on the road.
Adding an Array to the sketch, I can now cycle through a series of cars of each color that also decreases in size and opacity from the original, with the idea of adding a motion blur effect. I was too lazy to add the blur effect to the tires.
Back to Processing
About 9 months ago, maybe more, I put up a couple of examples of early attempts to grapple with the graphics/animation program called Processing. I was originally trying to learn the program because I’m interested in the possibilities of marrying visual and (eventually) musical elements and interactivity, and I was hoping to learn the program to use it for a large multimedia project that was premiered here in Riga in May. I quickly realized that I couldn’t apprehend this code-based language fast enough to use it for the project, and in a mad dash threw myself into learning Adobe After Effects instead. Yet the allure of Processing, with its potential for creating a sort of guided generative art is powerful to me indeed. (Go to openprocessing.org to view hundreds of examples where you can also view the code used to make them).
Anyway, I’ve now fought my way through about eight and a half chapters of Daniel Shiffman’s book Learning Processing. Today was the first time I created something completely from scratch that I thought was interesting. I was exploring the distance function, or dist(), that calculates the distance between two points, most often (I guess) used to calculate the distance between the X and Y location of your mouse. So here is a drawing program. Roll your mouse over the screen. If you press a key on your keyboard, it should clear the screen. Have fun. I thought it was pretty meditative. The best results seem to happen if you take your time and move your mouse in a slow, controlled way.
Cantala Women’s Choir perform El Paso de La Siguiriya at Lawrence University on May 28
The Cantala Women’s Choir of the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music will perform my El Paso de la Siguiriya, a flamenco-inflected setting for women’s voices of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. Conducted by Phillip A. Swan, the choir will perform in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin on May 28 at 8PM.
This is the second performance of one of my works by Cantala. Last May, they performed my The Moon of the Floating World. Click on the link to hear a live recording of that performance.
San Francisco Choral Artists perform Rekviem on May 18 at Old First Concerts in San Francisco
San Francisco Choral Artists will perform new American choral music in a program May 18 presented by Composers, Inc. Magen Solomon directs the 24-voice semi-professional choir, now celebrating their 25th anniversary, in a program that includes my Rekviem, a setting in Russian of a short but beautiful and moving text by Anna Akhmatova. Also on the program is Frank La Rocca’s 2005 Meistersings Choral Competition winning Miserere, an a cappella setting of Psalm 51 in Latin and Trevor Gomes’ Sunscape for mixed chorus and piano. Additional works TBA.
Old First Concerts
May 18, 8PM
1751 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA 94109 | 415.474.1608
Tickets cost $12/15
“100 Grams of Culture”
Interview in Latvian on the LTV-1 television show “100 Grams of Culture,” as part of the Month of American Culture sponsored by the American Embassy. Aired on April 13, 2010. I answer some questions about American stereotypes in Latvia and some of the differences between the two cultures.
U.S. Embassy lecture tour on Rock music and American Culture
The American Embassy in Riga has invited me to lecture on the relationship between rock music and American culture as part of its annual Month of American Culture.
During these lectures, I will discuss selected songs as a window to understanding sociopolitical and other cultural trends in post WW II America. The songs include Hound Dog (Elvis Presley); Blowing in the Wind (Bob Dylan); Respect (Aretha Franklin); Break on Through (The Doors); Ohio (Crosby, Still, Nash & Young); Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana) and Wake Up (Rage Against the Machine).
Time: April 12, 2010 from 2pm to 4pm
Location: Latvia Culture College
Street: Bruņinieku Street 5
City/Town: Riga
Time: April 13, 2010 from 3:30pm to 5:30pm
Location: Jazeps Medins Riga’s Music Secondary School
City/Town: Riga
Time: April 14, 2010 from 12pm to 2pm
Location: Daugavpils University
City/Town: Daugavpils
Time: April 14, 2010 from 3pm to 5pm
Location: Daugavpils Music Secondary School
City/Town: Daugavpils
Time: April 15, 2010 from 10:45am to 12:45pm
Location: Jekabpils State Gymnasium
City/Town: Jekabpils
A native New Yorker currently living and working in Latvia, Charles Griffin’s compositions and arrangements have been performed at festivals and concert halls throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.