About
Welcome to the Guidonian Hand. We are a group of bloggers just sharing our thoughts and experiences with any and everyone. Most of us are graduate students in composition or performance at Michigan State, but don’t hold that fine institution responsible for anything we write here.
Contributors:
David MacDonald: I’m a composer. As I like to remind everyone, I’m from St. Louis, Missouri. A few of my favorite composers/musicians are Bela Fleck (with and without the Flecktones), Paul Hindemith, Luciano Berio, Don Ellis, and Eric Dolphy. Aside from music, I like: words and language, TV shows on DVD, painting with acrylics, learning new things, talking to passionate people, office supply stores, and socially awkward situations. One of my life goals is to arrange and/or record a version of the musical bumper for NPR’s All Things Considered and submit it to them. [website, MySpace]
Igor “hoowwat” Houwat: Born in the far reaches of the Amazon, where the light cannot penetrate the thickest of jungle foliage, the hoowwat had been travelling ever in search for his alter ego. He had searched far and wide, through the deserts of the Moors where the heat boils the blood, the cedars of Lebanon where the wrong word at the wrong time puts your very life at risk, and to the land of the Gauls where the stench of the underground transportation carriage can make you swoon…. but to no avail – he could not find that holy grail so dear to him. Until, he landed on the shores of a small village situated in the north of the New World, the land of the Indians and deer and a miraculous white substance that falls ever so gently from the heavens to cover the plains as far as the eye can see, freezing the blood in his vessels as fast as the heat of the desert could boil it. It was a sign from the heavens, he was close to his destiny! And, lo and behold, on a small rectangular contraption, black in color, filled with images, called tee vee by the indigenous population, he heard the local jester, by the name of Daiv Shapel, say his last name so fully, so beautifully, so enthusiastically and so many times that his eyes welled with tears, the emotions he had buried for so long could surface at last: He had found HOME!
Dr. Ben Fuhrman: Ben is a composer and occasional musician, and recently finished his doctorate at Michigan State University. His primary focus is on electro-acoustic music and in the use of probability and cell biology as compositional devices. His works have been performed in the US, Brazil, Switzerland, and in Second Life. In his spare time, he enjoys books, music, films, and remixing the audio of Cold War propaganda films – an exercise that has produced several intensely humorous works that were unfortunately lost in an equally intense computer crash. [website, MySpace]
Timothy Rosenberg: Tim is a saxophonist and recording engineer from Syracuse, New York. Music-wise, Timothy enjoys performing new music as well as transcriptions. He loves to listen to jazz, rock and roll, as well as pop, R&B, and hip-hop. He is known for his keen ear, and unfiltered opinions regarding performances – an endearing quality once you get used to it. Timothy also is an avid sports fan, enjoys cooking, and discovering craft beers. He is also a photographer and internet enthusiast. Timothy is a huge fan of surrealist art work and runs a blog where he posts one surrealist piece of art per day.
Ty Forquer: In the beginning, there was the Wordpress… When asked by Dave to join this collective blog, I was excited by the idea, but unsure of what my contribution would look like. I already have a decent web presence. I am a micro-blogger at Tumblr and Twitter, a Facebook addict, and an owner of a neglected Myspace page (which has only survived this long because of its convenient media player). For me to commit to this project, it had to offer something different than these other outlets. I needed a muse. I found my inspiration in the prophet Moses (that sounds much more pious than I intended). You see, at the time I am writing this, I have been growing my hair out for a few years now, and haven’t shaved in over two months. As such, I have begun to resemble a biblical character (not an accurate representation of a biblical character, mind you, but a blond-haired blue-eyed European version of a biblical character like those found in so many illustrated children’s Bibles). Thus, a few people around campus have taken to calling me “Moses” and making jokes about things like parting the Red Sea and bringing forth water from a rock. As I thought more about Moses, however, I realized there may be a useful metaphor here. According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, when Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years before reaching the promised land. In my experiences in 20th and 21st Century music, I have had amazing experiences but I have also spent a certain amount of wandering in the wilderness. Sometimes they are one and the same. I remember experiences such as hearing the music of Steve Reich or Thomas DeLio for the first time and thinking, “I have no idea what I just heard…but I think I liked it.” So, this blog will be an avenue for exploring the wilderness of contemporary music. Of course, there is no promised land in this metaphor. The reward comes from learning to appreciate the wilderness.
Dr. Matthew Schoendorff: Like the vast majority of the human race, Matt burst into existence from his respective mother’s loins. This made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move. The fortunate incident provided him the opportunity to think about and come to various conclusions regarding life, the universe, and everything. Occasionally, he forms these thoughts into words arranged in syntax for your reading pleasure. He is a doctor of musical arts in composition, but please don’t hold that against him. [website]
