Istanbul Tango - Music by Avi Amon
I wrote this for for my music tutorial when I was visiting my grandparents in Turkey. Astor Piazzola was the inspiration but there’s different harmonic stuff going on in there. We had some great musicians playing for this past weekend’s dance+music collaboration. I’ll have pictures and audio up from that, soon.
I think a lot of young composers corner themselves into writing music that does this or that technical or harmonic thing, but we forget to think about piece’s playability or fun-level. This was a cool opportunity to write, receive feedback, and rearrange on the fly. Not a perfect recording, but who cares. You don’t get free access to pro musicians everyday…
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Black Earth / Kara Toprak - Fazıl Say
Beautiful piano work. From the video’s description:
Black Earth was inspired by Kara Toprak, a popular song in Turkey. The composer of the song, Aşık Veysel (1891-1973), was one of the last great Turkish balladeers and the final link in a thousand-year tradition.
Veysel went blind during childhood following an attack of smallpox. He subsequently began to learn to play the Saz, a Turkish lute, and to study poetry, initially for his own amusement. He made acquaintance with a variety of folk poets, and, after 1928, also travelled from village to village with his songs. Through the years, he became a cultural symbol of the Turkish Republic.
In the song Kara Toprak, Veysel describes loneliness and loss. All that remains is the Black Earth, the color of the landscape in his native town of Sivas.
Fazil Say imitates the sound of the Saz through his selection of a muted effect in the Introduction and Epilogue of Black Earth - a meditation on the themes of a ballad. In contrast, folklore, Romantic piano style and jazz are entwined in the central sections to form a large-scale outburst. Fazil Say performs this works in both concerts of classical music and a jazz festivals: particularly in the folkloristic sections, he employs the improvisatory freedom which is inherent to both folk music and jazz.
(via my mom)
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Come September - Music By Avi Amon, Lyrics by Julia Gytri
Another video from our semester-end cabaret! This is a re-imagining of the Persephone myth. I think we both mess up the words a bit, but it’s one of my favorite things I’ve collaborated on all year.
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Tick Tock - Music By Avi Amon, Lyrics by Max Vernon
Here’s a video from our end-of-semester cabaret at NYU. Its a standalone scene/song from a larger work - just one of the 762 things I must have written last semester… Enjoy!
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Aaron Lindsey - Master Class on Gospel chord-voicing
Nate sent this my way a few weeks back and I’ve been trying to study it as much as possible but it’s hard when you don’t actually have a piano in front of you.
Seriously this guy’s a monster. I mean, like, a different plane of existence monster. I think plenty of keys players, myself included, will get caught up in “cool changes” as opposed to a melody-driven chord structure. I’m intrigued - and baffled - by how much he uses his left hand to “cover” the lower and middle registers so his right hand is free to move about on the rest of the board. He maintains fullness, but there’s a point to it.
His approach to key changes (particularly around 6:15) is interesting, too. I need to spend more time on that stuff so every key change I make doesn’t sound like a jarring Celine Dion album from the 90’s. You really can get from one key to any other key smoothly, you just need to be smart about it!
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SLAM Tuesday #3
Hooray for new SLAM friends! Welcome, Nate. If anyone wants to join for next week, let Allie or myself know.
Heat
The world is boiling around me
and I feel like I just showed up for the cinnamon-liquor party.
Getting me going,
getting me going
creating my own luck is something to call it
in that over-coffee sort of way and
old lady perfume that you don’t like to think about.
But it’s the Fire inside that keeps me alive.
Maybe it’s istanbul (with a lower case i) and a millennia of family
huddling around traditions no one can explain.
a mother,
a father,
a brother, sister, grandparent, an aunt or uncle,
or a relative who is just a picture in some forgotten box.
Maybe it’s fingertips on fire,
burning up ivory tusks and plastic veneers -
Mozart, Beethoven, and Katy Perry -
at 1000 miles per hour
ticking away, not noticing the clock or any. other. thing.
Hungry? Fuck it.
Back hurts? Fuck it.
Drenched pits and brows are the way I roll, fool.
I’m sitting on my high bench right now,
the heat that is my breath coursing through veins that
might as well be made of deconstructed fire-ant abdomens.
Or maybe it’s Her.
Abstractly speaking, of course.
You know her,
the one making your throat scratch
and lips burn and eyes tear and palms sweat
just to think you might get to glance at Her.
Her mind just so
Her eyes and hair and oh, that DRESS just so
Her shirt rising, passing Her navel just so
making Her smile just so you can say you made Her smile,
and know -
As I walk through the valley towards the shadow of death
I will Feel and Revel in all that is holy and good.
I will Love and I will Live and never wish I would
have done otherwise.
I should go into politics, maybe.
You know, shake some shit up.
Nah, that probably wouldn’t work because of my tumblr and
all about the ass.
So, you say the Earth’s spinning wildly, blindly around
into a Martian sun?
Well,
I say, along the way, let’s keep going
until there’s nowhere left to
run.
It’s the Fire inside that keeps me alive…..
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It was pretty quiet, though, because Ernie was playing the piano. It was supposed to be something holy, for God’s sake, when he sat down at the piano. Nobody’s that good. About three couples, besides me, were waiting for tables, and they were all shoving and standing on tiptoes to get a look at old Ernie while he played. He had a big damn mirror in front of the piano, with this big spotlight on him, so that everybody could watch his face while he played. You couldn’t see his fingers while he played—just his big old face. Big deal. I’m not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should’ve heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would’ve puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific I’d hate it. I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet.J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
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Jamie Cullum - The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix Cover)
One of the baddest in the game… this is my kinda groove. Song starts right around 2:00.
I’ve been a huge fan since I first got his album almost 10 years ago. So creative and just nasty on the keys. Please tour in America, thanks.
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Growl
Poetry by Kevin Hageman
Music/Beatbox by Avi Amon
I recently connected with Kevin, a local slam poet making waves in the Philly area, and we recorded this live at my house the other night. Dude is nasty! Looking forward to more collaboration like this very soon…
Plug in your headphones. You dig our artsy-fartsy vibe?
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It was the best of nights…..
I was going through some old ProTools files and came across this gem around 4:00 in the morning today/yesterday. I can’t remember when this was, exactly, but I think it was about a year ago? Tara, Flounder, Keith, and myself (the only 4 people I expect to listen to this clip in its entirety) were just hanging out and decided to put a microphone in the room. I’m on the keys.
Not even drunk. Just friendship.
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Avi Amon | Musician
