Anyway, you can come too! It’s apparently being broadcast on the internet. If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you can get an RSVP for the web broadcast. The page says that space is limited to 200 people, but I hear that it’s been opened up since that information went up.

I’m looking forward to it. Yoon was a bit hazy on the details, but it sounds like they were rehearsing in the room they use for the general assembly, and I think that’s where they’ll be performing it. Neato!

It’s just loud enough that I can always hear it. Since I first noticed it, it’s gone continuously, every few seconds. What’s especially annoying about it is that it doesn’t quite go at regular intervals. I’m pretty good at tuning things out, and I think if the beeping were at regular intervals, I could tune it out in the way we learn to ignore the regular ticking of a clock. But the irregularity of the beeping means that I start to half-consciously anticipate the beep when it’s due, or experience a micro-moment of surprise when it sounds slightly ahead of schedule. A stimulus that is constantly changing is hardest to ignore. Because I’m sort of a fresh air fanatic, this means that we need to sleep with white noise playing, or I’ll lie in bed anticipating the beep. It’s pretty annoying.

You know what else is annoying? People who pester me to use the august authority of this blog to promote their own projects. I won’t say who has recently begun a campaign of harassment and threats, except that he occasionally comments here and that he has haunted my life for the last 16 years like some malevolent trickster god. He wants me to mention XXX Live Nude Girls, a barbie doll opera, which is premiering at this year’s Summerworks Festival in Toronto. I’m obliging him now with a link only because I believe that if you don’t give in to people who make threats, they’ll never go away and leave you in peace.

Of course I haven’t seen the show, so I can’t vouch for it. I can, however, grudgingly admit to the high quality of at least some of the people associated with the show. Toca Loca seems to be involved with it somehow. I’ve seen them live twice, and they’re electrifying. The vocalist Christine Duncan is also part of the project. Her strange, creepy, inventive album Barnyard Drama: Memories and a List of Things To Do is fantastic.

Anyway, I include an exclusive promotional picture for the show below the fold, mainly to show you, concerned reader, what the world is coming to these days.

Promotional photo for XXX Live Nude Girls

In the first set of tomorrow night’s show (at 8:30pm) Jacob Sacks, Vinnie Sperrazza and Thomas Morgan will be doing a tribute to Ahmad Jamal’s But Not for Me: Live at Pershing Lounge 1958. It’s a funny project for these musicians, since I’ve never heard them play the same song in remotely the same way. But tomorrow night they’ll be lovingly recreating the album. They’re rehearsing it in my living room as I type this, and it sounds pretty fucking great.

Update: Oh, and the band will be recording a live album on the May 22nd and the 23rd performances. Come out and add your clapping to the album.

Saturday, May 9th

8:30PM: Justin Keller’s “Land of Leland”
9:30PM: Yoon Sun Choi and The E-String Band

Friday, May 15th

8:30PM: Lady Clown
9:30PM: Yoon Sun Choi and The E-String Band

Friday, May 22nd

8:30PM: Jacob Sacks/Orlando Hernandez
9:30PM: Yoon Sun Choi and The E-String Band

Saturday, May 23nd

8:00PM: Jacob Sacks/Thomas Morgan/Vinnie Sperrazza
8:30PM: Yoon Sun Choi and the E-String Band

Yeah Yeah Records Festival – Every Friday in April.

April 3rd, 2009
8:00pm soloists: Akiko Sasaki (piano) and Miranda Sielaff (viola)
9:00pm Yoon Sun Choi and Jacob Sacks Duo
10:00pm Matt Renzi Trio

April 10th, 2009
8:00pm Dan Weiss (drums)
9:00pm Jacob Sacks Quintet
10:00pm Ok/Ok

April 17th, 2009
8:00pm Khabu Doug Young
9:00pm Stacken/Knuffke Duo
10:00pm Bishop/Cleaver/Flood Trio

April 24th, 2009
8:00pm Josh Sinton
9:00pm Vinnie Sperrazza/Matt Blostein Quintet
10:00pm Jacob Sacks and Eivind Opsvik’s Two Miles A Day with Mat Maneri

More recently, I’ve just completely overhauled Yeah Yeah Records, our little label, complete with a manifesto. Very exciting. It’s still a little rough around the edges (for example, the store still isn’t set up to execute a sale directly yet, so for now I’ve just set all the inventory for 0 on all items), but we’ll work all that out.

The site overhaul coincides with a publicity campaign to promote Yoon’s latest CD. We hired a publicist! Using our credit cards!

Not content to be starting up just one business, I’ve also gone and started (for some value of “started” – it’s complicated since we’re inheriting something else that already had a certain amount of momentum and a portfolio) an IT Consultancy with a friend.

This means, of course, that my dissertation is on hold. I’m still not sure what I’ll be when I grow up, but right now I’m having fun pursuing these other things, so I think I’ll keep on pursuing them.

Anyway. It’s good! Here’s the first track, written by Yoon, which sounds to me like it’s about an obsessive love affair with someone who is just no good. I assume that the song does not refer to me.

(Yoon isn’t actually listed on the program for some reason. Rest assured that she’s the only singer performing that night. She’ll do about 13 or 14 songs.)

If you want tickets, go here, and then click “Buy your tickets now!” on the left, and then “January,” you’ll see “In the mood – best of the big bands” playing at the Kingston Gospel Temple.

If you are free, please come to my show at Cornelia Street Cafe this Thursday at 8:30pm. The first set will be a set of duos and the 10pm set will be the E-String Band. I do hope that you can share the evening with me. It’s my last gig for the year and I would love to see you all!

Thank you and Happy Holidays!
Yoon Sun Choi

Thursday, December 20

8:30pm
Duets with:
Miranda Sielaff – viola
Vinnie Sperrazza – drums
Mike MicGinnis – woodwinds
Khabu Doug Young – ukulele
Judith Berkson – voice
and a few other surprises I hope

10:00pm
The E-String Band
Jacob Sacks – melodica
Thomas Morgan – guitar
Khabu Doug Young – ukulele
Vinnie Sperrazza – percussion

Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street
(F/V/B/D/A/C/E train to West 4th)

$10

This is very reasonable, I think. It’s not your typical concert experience to be sure. The shows are in a high school auditorium, with very uncomfortable seats. And although I don’t have a great deal of experience with crowds at classical concerts, I suspect that the audience at these events is slightly more likely to let a cell phone go off, to shush disturbances more loudly than the disturbances themselves, and to do other things that make me hold my head in my hands. But all in all we’ve found it a great deal, and if you live in NYC, you’re seriously broke, and you enjoy good music, then you should really give it a try. See you there.

There are now two kinds of people in the world: those who have seen Gregorius on Youtube and those who have not. Those who have know that the Finnish singer’s version of “YMCA” was the breakout viral video of the summer, when it was watched by over a million people online.

Up until five minutes ago, I belonged in the latter category. Now that I have moved into the former category, I am not entirely certain of the wisdom of the move. If you want to chance it, here’s one, courtesy of Lamey:

And if you live in NYC and you’re interested in any other instrument, we know lots of very talented musicians and teachers in NYC and are always happy to give recommendations.

Mbuki Mvuki is Bantu for “to shuck off one’s clothes in order to dance.”

It’s not a single word, but I think it’s pithier than the English gloss.

The video won’t be set to this version of the song (which is just a low-quality live recording), but this mp3 gives a reasonable sense of the song. (Actually, she’s recording a version of it now at the home studio of a friend of a friend.)

I’ve written before about Yoon’s performances, but I thought I would say something quick about how her band approaches a song like this. First, there is a recognizable tune which has a particular form, and which the musicians to a certain extent follow. The rest—the arrangement, the changes in mood and intensity, all that stuff—is improvised. So, for example, in this version towards the end of the song the band gets quieter and quieter until the guitarist, Thomas Morgan, is the only one playing. They played it this way the other night because that’s the way they all happened to feel it should sound as they were playing. Watching them play live was fun because you could see them all, without any rehearsal or direction, deciding that this was the right way to end the song this time around. They might record it this way too, since it did sound awfully pretty, but even if they do, I would be surprised if they could be induced to play the song this way a third time, since by then they would have moved on to exploring a different way of presenting the music. So, it’s a kind of music that values spontaneity over polish. There’s nothing wrong with polish, but it just isn’t that kind of music. Anyway, it’s one reason I find their live shows endlessly entertaining; it’s always impossible to tell what’s coming next.

The E-String Band is Yoon Sun Choi on vocals and toy piano, Jacob Sacks on melodica, Khabu Doug Young on ukulele, Thomas Morgan on guitar, and Vinnie Sperrazza on cymbal and laptop. Each of the musicians is playing a sort of secondary instrument: Yoon doesn’t usually play toy piano, Jacob is a pianist, Khabu is better known for guitar, Thomas typically plays bass, and Vinnie usually has a full drum set.

The song is released under a Creative Commons license that allows you to share the file with friends.

Here it is.

• The file Glass Heart .mp3 identified by urn:sha1:OTQRNVTT7PAVNDDPZH3MLRQJETPBKS6A is licensed to the public under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This entire album will blow your mind.

Thursday, October 11, 2007
8:30pm

Yoon Sun Choi and The E-String Band

Yoon Sun Choi – voice and toy piano
Jacob Sacks – melodica
Thomas Morgan – guitar
Khabu Doug Young – ukulele
Vinnie Sperrazza – percussion

S P A C E Gallery
207A Front Street (South Street Seaport)
A/C to Broadway Nassau, 2/3 4/5 to Fulton

$10

That’s a great site too, in case you’ve never come across it.