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Boston Arts Academy Film Festival (BAAFF) supports the creation and exhibition of original short films of emerging filmmakers from Boston Arts Academy. This festival proudly celebrates the passion, independent spirit and inventiveness of our talented BAA artists.
Just a heads up that the jaballesteros.net domain will be expiring in the next week, so be sure to reset your bookmarks to the .com domain adopted during last year's website redesign!
As an extra note, I've added entries in the Film and Media page for the upcoming short films Some of His Things and Unbalanced, produced and presented through the Boston Arts Academy.
Production has wrapped up and we're into post for the short films "Some of His Things", written and directed by fellow Boston Arts Academy teachers Chris Flaherty and Dan Sullivan; and BAA student Jeyrie Rodriguez's film "Unbalanced". Special thanks to film teacher John ADEkoje for making all of this possible.
Reserve your free tickets for the premiere screening and a full slate of shorts! (Monday 18 May, 7-9pm, at the Paramount Center in downtown Boston)
(And as an addendum, a few recent changes to the site:
Image copyright 2015 Andrés Ballesteros
This winter has been one to remember in Boston, but it looks like it's finally tapering away. In memory of the many fallen records from the season, here's a collection of winter- and snow-inspired music over the past few centuries.
1720: Vivaldi's Winter, the Fourth of his Four Seasons concerti, performed by Gli Incogniti, Amandine Beyer soloist:
1828: Schubert's haunting song cycle Winterreise, a tale of a man's winter journey as Schubert himself reached the end of his brief life, here performed by the inimitable Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau:
Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1, subtitled Winter Daydreams, here performed by the Royal Concertgebouw:
And finally, a more modern strain: the 3rd of Chaya Czernowin's Winter Songs, an icy, tenebrous cycle that she describes as "reflect[ing] the aspect of winter which is about being pulled into the inner cave… At the same time, underneath, in the ground, the roots of life slowly grow stiff and blindly start to search for a path between the stones.” This performance is by Ensemble Nikel and Quatuor Diotima:
Last week's post about the state of American orchestras mentioned that only about 15% of performances of pieces by living composers are by women, but it's okay! Really! I mean, at least we're not conductors, Right?
Demographics of American Music Directors Explained in Gif Format (both images via Suby Raman)
Or of the comets, at least. (Via the European Space Agency)
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra reviewed the 2014-15 season in a wide range of American orchestras, and the stats are fascinating. Highlights include:
YouTube user Aeolian Hall has an excellent collection of piano roll videos, but this is one of the most interesting: an inverted version of the 1st movement of Beethoven's 5th. (Think DA-DA-DA-DUUUM but strangely major.)