Mark Likes Music

If you're a fan of Cold War history and find yourself in Nova Scotia, you should check out the Atlantic Canada Aviation Museum out by the Halifax airport. Here's their F-86 Sabre (with daughter), a plane that went into production right after World War II, and entered the Canadian Armed Forces in the 1950s as tensions with the Soviet Union were really heating up: It also has in its collection a CF-101 Voodoo , the plane that Canada decided purchased from McDonnell in 1961, two years after Diefenbaker canceled the supersonic  Avro Arrow  (it was a controversial decision, as many believed that the Candadian-made Arrow would have made the country a major global military player in the fight against Communism): The museum is no-frills--there are no tour guides, the posted descriptions of the exhibits are designed and printer using Word and an inkjet printer, and the computer displays don't always work--but whoever operates it puts a lot of care into...

We arrived at our hotel room here in Nova Scotia after an exhausting first vacation day to find two roaches on the wall. When I mentioned it to the desk attendant the next morning, I was met with a curt denial: "No you didn't; it was an earwig." I don't believe that customers are always right, and sometimes they need to be educated. What is inexcusable, though, is a lack of empathy. Escalating a complaint situation by invalidating your patron's own version of the truth is a sure way to lose them for life.

Yesterday, my wife and I went to Rosie's Hot Buns for dinner on Monroe Avenue (right next to the bong shop). It's a high-end fast-food joint that sells fancy tasting $4 sandwiches. Get two of them, and you've got a good meal. Rosie's is just down the block from Dogtown, which makes this our new go-to area for cheap eats, on our own or with the kids. We also like Pizza Stop on State Street (good if you're over at Hochstein for lessons or a concert) and Bill Gray's in the 'burbs (don't judge me). In the East End, the new local lunch spot Camarella's closed after less than a year. Working down in that area is a dismal proposition, and losing this place doesn't help. It's not like I'm going to be going out and getting $10 mimosas for lunch at Fraiche.

Seems as if everyone wants to know how all those music students are going to support themselves when they get out of school . In next month's Opera News , Allan Kozinn writes about how conservatories are incorporating career training into their curriculums, and News Hour ran its own repor t a few weeks ago on the travails of fine-arts students. Jon Marcus of the Times Higher Education Supplement (UK) put the focus on the new Paul R. Judy Center at Eastman (disclaimer: my employer), which will be dedicated to helping students create their own ensembles, as did Rochester's own Democrat and Chronicle and RBJ .  There's a lot of optimism surrounding new groups like Alarm Will Sound and the International Contemporary Ensemble, but so far the work they create doesn't pay nearly as well as a even a third-tier orchestra job (granted, there are few of those). More and more, musicians are surviving by piecing together a living from playing a little, teaching a lot, and ta...

I thought it was a joke when I heard about it a couple of years ago, but Finnish tango is a real thing . So is German-language-loving dirty ol' Finnish men, apparently. Sheesh. Tango came to Helsinki as early as the 1910s, and was at the height of its popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s, when songs like "Satumaa" by Reijo Taipale's "Satumaa" caught on as indigenous popular music: Want to learn more? Go here and here . The New York Times recently ran a story about Finnish tango as a dying art; read it here.  

On Deceptive Cadence, Anastasia Tsioulcas praises Vi Hart for "demystifying" serialism. Perhaps the best way to understand twelve-tone composition, though, is to listen to great music written using the technique, which is why I picked these as two of my favorite American symphonies. 

Real-estate agents really love their jobs here in Rochester. Especially Ira Jevotovsky: And there's this: The house is really clean, or it actually comes with sequins. Either way: awesome. My favorite, though, is the sign posted after the sale mocking tardy customers. "Too late!" it said. Hilarious.

In the UK, Andy Doe on Proper Discord criticized both the Times Higher Education Supplement and The Independent for reporting that the Royal Academy of Music has a 100% employment rate among its graduates. According to Doe, the survey upon which both sources base their articles omits over half the RAM's graduating class and defines employment very loosely as basically doing more than simply sitting around all day on the couch. The Times Higher Education Supplement 's American correspondent, Jon Marcus, cites some numbers in the US , and frames them optimistically. Citing a study from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, Marcus says that the unemployment rate for music students is only one per cent higher than the unemployment rate for university grads in general (8.6 per cent versus 7.9 per cent), and lower than other arts majors (almost 10 per cent of them can't find jobs after graduation). (Disclosure: Marcus discusses the Eastman School of...

On NPR's Deceptive Cadence blog, Tom Huizenga is looking for the great American symphony , and he provides a comprehensive Spotify playlist of candidates. Here are a couple more to consider. The first is  Rochberg's Symphony No. 2 , which George Szell premiered in 1959 with the Cleveland Orchestra. It's got all the things that makes Rochberg great--it's aggressive, ironic, and filled with breathtaking musical contrasts--without the (at times) hammy reliance on stylistic allusion that marked his mid-'60s and '70s music. I think it's his best piece. The second is Wallingford Riegger 's Symphony No. 3 from 1948. It's alive with rhythmic energy; it'd be a great piece to choreograph: