Martin Kohlstedt - KSY (taken from “Strom”, 2017)

Dirk Maassen - Muse

Luca Longobardi & Diego Guarnieri - Timeline

Slow Meadow - We’re Losing the Moon

Christina Vantzou - Sound House (from “No. 4″)

Vitaly Beskrovny - Believe in your Dream.

Goldmund - What Lasts, from the recent “Occasus”.

#DrawingPride Day 15: #Pansexual
1992 - I was 17, and drew this portrait of Leonard Bernstein from a photo I saw for the cover of my high school’s literary magazine.

His wild, passionate, perfectly reckless music that channeled so much of the anxious, fast-changing spirit of America was QUEER. He was queer. Everyone knew it. But no one really knew how to talk about it, so it became a footnote. It’s an aspect of his legacy that’s framed separately from his art and his contributions to society. Even though it was probably his sexuality that drove him, that released his creativity, that made him who he was.

Which is why I am really disappointed by the @skirball_la’s single mention of his sexuality in their current retrospective on his life and work (which is otherwise excellent.) SWIPE RIGHT to see the signage. It presents his sexuality to us like a problematic skin condition.

In reality: Leonard and his wife Felicia established an open marriage that suited them, and except for a short separation near the end, they stayed together for 25 years and raised three kids. They were married until she died. It was rocky, and it sounds like L really did go for the boys, but he and Felicia loved each other (letters express it quite clearly), and unless you apply a really starchy definition of heterosexual death-do-us-part marriage, I think that their relationship can be called a relative success.

Yet, this sign only makes mention of: His “complicated” double life – Hiding his passions from public view – Felicia resigning to accommodate his sexuality – The separation and tragic end to the marriage – and no mention of his male companions. Some were famous in their own right, but in this summation of his love life they might as well have been faceless distractions.
WTF?

He didn’t come from a time when people identified as Pansexual, or rarely even bisexual. Maybe he was? However we might choose to assess his sexuality, it was clearly a huge part of his being. And it doesn’t make sense to downplay its importance as we try to understand his art and his genius.

#queer #queerartist #leonardbernstein
#pride #pride2018 #queerhistory #lgbt #lgbtq #bierasure #classicalmusic #composer

Hey everyone! Last year I wrote and recorded an album of piano solos and songs. It is called Kingdoms, and is available now from all of the services you use to beam music to your ears (links here).

Last year was a lot. For the first time, I confronted some mental health issues I had been harboring for a while, anxieties that were heightened by the state of the world, causing me to sometimes become isolated and frustrated. But I’m grateful to have my wife, my kids, my family, who gave me the clues and nudges I needed to stop avoiding the issues that were right in front of me, screaming to be seen.

So I talked to people. I asked myself questions. And I started writing. A lot. Returning to the piano – the instrument that I have been playing for as long as I can remember – felt good and real and safe, and allowed me to externalize what was going on. And when I played these thoughts back to me, I could confront them, and sit with them in defined intervals, and work through them.

I wrote about twice as much material as ended up on Kingdoms, but by having so much music to work through, I could really focus on the ideas I wanted to develop and explore, and create a musical through-line that I thought would be understandable for me years from now, when I look back at this whole process. And I hope, that when my children are old enough to take notice, they will listen to this, and maybe learn things about their dad that he couldn’t tell them in person.

The stunning album art was created by @zachsleepshere, of Star vs the Forces of Evil andOwl House fame.

I am grateful to my friends, Caren and Kevin, who I first performed with 20 years ago, whose voices grace this project. They are singular talents, two of the best singers I know. And I am thankful for the people at Capitol Studios, and their beautiful 9-foot Yamaha, and engineer Steve Genewick, for making this all sound so good.

xo

Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa - I. Ludus

Alfred Schnittke -  Minnesang, for 52 voices, 1980/1981

Ligeti György - Sonata for solo cello

EASY LISTENING:

Charlemagne Palestine - Strumming Music

[Shandar, 1974]