A weekly post featuring talks by innovative thinkers, sponsored by TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). This is what the internet was made for – to allow challenging ideas to escape from their academic ghettoes and hang out in a place where they can talk to each other.
Composer and polymath, Mark Applebaum, begins with a tune by Beethoven and extrapolates from that into his roles as interpreter, improviser, inventor, composer, visual artist, scavenger, designer, performance artist, dramaturge, and choreographer. All this because he’s bored and is trying to answer the question, But is it music? Along the way he introduces some extremely odd and entertaining instruments, notation, and ways of expressing music. Liberating stuff.
If you liked Mark Applebaum, you’ll also enjoy this video in which a young Frank Zappa plays the bicycle on the Steve Allen Show.
I’m kind of glad I got behind in reading your great blog: Zappa and Joni on one Sunday morning. I will be smiling all day. Thanks.
Applebaum’s compositions sound very much like many of the works of Frank Zappa. Someone should ask him, “What’s the deal?” Is he the new incarnation of Larry the Dwarf?
If you’re not used to a certain type of music, then it will all tend to sound the same. I have that problem with rap music – one song sounds very much like the other, and I don’t particularly enjoy the genre anyway. If a Martian heard a range of classical music, he/she/it would probably think it all sounds the same. As do many Earthlings who don’t like classical music.
I’m just a little resentful that in the video Applebaum does not give a shout out to Frank. Larry the Dwarf would have. Frank did to Edgar Varese. At least, it’s good to see Applebaum getting more and more recognition as time goes by.