...you know, when the "Best of 2007" lists begin to pop up like wild mushrooms. We were driving home last night when we changed radio stations and picked up on an episode of KPCC's The California Report where critics Steve Hochman and Andrew Gilbert were proffering their Top 10 lists for rock and jazz. Lo and betold, a few artists in the extended Cryptogramophone fold were on there: Alan Pasqua's The Antisocial Club and Plays Monk (featuring Ben Goldberg, Devin Hoff and Scott "Pops" Amendola) and Spark! by Myra Melford and Marty Ehrlich. You can check out their lists or listen to an archive of their discussion here.
In other less celebratory news, Karlheinz Stockhausen [pictured above] died last week at age 79. Pitchfork Media has a pretty decent obit on the iconoclastic German composer. For further reference, go visit Mr. Stockhausen's homepage or his MySpace page, a cool visual discography site for his complete works, and a slightly odd interview with Dazed & Confused magazine. Stockhausen is also discussed at length in music critic Alex Ross' terrific new book on modern music The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.
Rest im Frieden, vortrefflicher Komponist.
