I am always looking for affordable, extraordinary & meaningful gifts for friends, family and colleagues, especially with the holidays approaching. We have the grooviest vintage shops here in Williamsburg, just a short L train ride under the East River. I recently had my grandfather's Rolex tweeked right here in the hood by Leo De La Cruz right on N. 7th street. He has a GORGEOUS selection of vintage watches that are guaranteed to run like new. 1:46 Watch Repair & Designer Collective 146 N. 7th Street
Also, for fashion/shoes/tea on Sunday at 4PM with AMAZING baked goods by the owner herself, stylist Malin Landeaus 155 N. 6th street @ Bedford Ave
My favorite Street Vendor on N. 6th and Bedford, she has THE BEST prices for vintage jewelry and always fabulous finds.
Bedford Cheese Shop of course is amazing for the absolute best cheese, salami's, chocolate and everything yummy. Amy's baguette is a favorite as well as the Napoli Bagette for just $1.50
more to come on Ugly Luggage, Amarcord, Whisk & Moon River Chatel.......
For this week of Turntable Tuesday I bring you one of my favorite Tech House tracks that is one of the most beautiful electronic music compositions I have ever heard, Callisto (Joris Voorn Remix.) The uplifting synth has so much feeling and emotion that it reminds the listener how much of the human element can still be captured within electronic music. The composition makes you feel as though every element within the track is so organic that it is not just a sterile loop, but each beat and accent is subtly changing as though performed live. Each layer adds more texture and movement as though it was originally written out on staff paper. The "Synthapella" (the synth with no beat) was later released and still charted as a top ten song because it is just so moving. Of course the song begins with a very simple two minutes of just beat, like most house tracks, this is part of the arrangement that gives the DJ time to properly blend two tracks into one. So for our purposes you may want to start the song at two minutes to skip the intro.
This past weekend was picture perfect for our ceremony at Bonnet Island Estate on the Jersey Shore. The location was rustic and chic to fit this lovely bride & groom from Brooklyn. The boathouse where the ceremony took place was completely infused with the scent of fresh lavender.
Their ceremony was classic with a little whimsy.
Groom & Bridal Party - Dream a little Dream
Bride - Moon River
Special Meditation - Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens
For this edition of Turntable Tuesday I bring you one of may favorite Technicolour & Komtaic collaborations, "No Evil." A beautiful liquid drum and bass track filled with smooth rolling basslines, tasteful melodies, and pristine production. Released in August by the cutting edge drum & bass label Rubik Records, the release is available at all major digital distributors. Technicolour & Komatic are currently two of the top upcoming drum & bass producers from London. They are known for their smooth style of drum and bass filled with great musical ideas and ultra clean production.
Halloween is the perfect time for Modest Mussorgsky's (1839-1881) Night On Bald Mountain. (composed in 1867) Most of us can recognize it from Walt Disney's FANTASIA in the video below.
Many people have grown accustomed to hearing Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain during Halloween - it's definitely a dark piece of music. Rightfully so, the story behind Night on Bald Mountain is not one of light nature. Inspired by a short story by the Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol, in which witches would gather on Bald Mountain and hold sabbath, Mussorgsky was able to create a dreadfully haunting piece of music.
Almost none of the compositions by which we best know Modest Mussorgsky is played today in its original form. From the masterly Pictures at an Exhibition, originally for solo piano, to the opera Khovanshchina and the Songs and Dances of Death, the music of this erratic Russian genius has been subjected to all manner of arrangements and orchestrations. Rimsky-Korsakov tells us that Mussorgsky's original versions of the work that he was to arrange as Night on Bald Mountain were impractical. This is only his opinion; one of these quite viable originals has in fact recently been revived and recorded. If he was not one of the great masters of instrumentation, Mussorgsky seems at least to have known the sound he wanted. But it is Rimsky's admittedly excellent orchestration of Bald Mountainthat continues to live on in the concert hall.
First composed in 1867, the work whose Russian title translates St. John's Eve on the Bare Mountain underwent two subsequent adaptations by the composer—first as part of the opera-ballet Mlada, and finally as a sort of ill-fitting "dream-sequence" in his Gogol-based opera Sorochintsy Fair. After Mussorgsky's death in 1881, Rimsky-Korsakov took portions of all three versions of the St. John's music to create his orchestral tour de force.
"At first I could make nothing of Night on Bald Mountain," Rimsky wrote in his autobiography. "Mussorgsky had planned the piece originally in the 1860s (it was then called Midsummer's Eve), under the influence of Liszt's Totentanz, and then left it lying for a long time." After describing the other versions, Rimsky-Korsakov concludes that "none of these as a whole was suitable for publication and performance. Consequently I resolved to make a purely orchestral piece from Mussorgsky's material and did my utmost to keep all the best and most connected parts without change, and to put in as little as possible of my own." Rimsky-Korsakov's reconstruction was published in 1886.
Inspired partly by a Gogol tale, Mussorgsky's Bald Mountain depicts a Witches' Sabbath on a Ukrainian mountain-top. Rimsky described his version thus: "Subterranean sounds of unearthly voices. Appearance of the Spirits of Darkness, followed by that of the Chernobog [‘Black God']. Glorification of Chernobog and celebration of the Black Mass. Witches' Sabbath. At the height of the orgy, the bell of the little village church is heard from afar. The Spirits of Darkness are dispersed. Daybreak."
This week I bring a truly beautiful tune "Les Violons Ivres" by Agoria. The song begins with a very smooth beat and builds into the perfect marriage of luscious synth lines and an evolving string part. The minute the strings kick in the listener feels a sense of bliss that will remain even after the song has finished. Originally released as a vinyl in June 2007 by Different Records, a French Record Label that specializes in Electronic Music, the song has been charted by some of the top DJ's in the industry, including German icon Paul Kalkbrenner.
It's been a total "Sex & the City" fall between our wedding at the New York Public Library and last evening at the Soho House. The Soho House is a hip members only club that you might recognize from their pool, seen on "Sex & the city".
I played solo piano for a very chic engagement party on their beautiful in-house steinway grand. Everything about this celebration was casually sophisticated with large doses of warmth and grace on every level.
Bravo & Brava to the staff and to my lovely clients. I can't wait for the wedding.
