America is known as the “land of opportunity,” and people from all around the world admire the supposed equality of U.S. society. Foreigners come searching for the “American dream,” wanting to take advantage of America’s system of “achieving the impossible.”…
… the wings alive!–excite the marbled snows…
A fugue of wings darts down through the still air,A dancing passage of staccato notes,Now up, now down, and glancing everywhere,Glissandos of black caps and neat white throats.Here …
It’s three fifteen in the afternoon when I arrive at the photographer’s studio. The entire apartment is one large room. All four walls consist only of brick and black cavities where brick once existed. A lonesome, feeble wood column reluctantly…
In this current era with the way things are going, it is really easy for us to learn about all the negative things happening around the world and to feel powerless. Every day that we turn on the radio, open up a newspaper or watch the news, we are bombarded with stories about horrible things being done. Very rarely do we ever hear any positive, progressive news. For all the problems that we hear about, it is extremely rare that we hear about solutions for them. But if I can offer a viable solution to all of our problems with just one word, I'd say, "organize!" If we organize ourselves as a mass movement, there is nothing that can stop us. And as musicians who care about these global issues, it is our task to bring music to the forefront of our organizing. Music has been in the past, and will be in the future, an extremely important catalyst for social change.
Ithaca, New York has to be one of the strangest cities in America. It’s most easily recognizable for its schools—Cornell University and Ithaca College. It is known for its liberalism, its waterfalls and a nationally known music festival called Grassroots. Much like Boston, most of its population consists of college students. Come summertime, half the city is empty. Shortly after the students leave, they are replaced a couple weeks later with music festival hippies by the busload that pour in bearing tofu and non-conformity. Many of these long time non-conformists end up loving Ithaca so much, that they stay. From these travelers eco-friendly communities are created, homeless populations skyrocket and a never-ending Bush protest begins. It is a very liberal, very white place. It is a place of acceptance of all ideas except the wrong ones, who are open to all cultures but will never change their own.
A case for microtonality?
At the crossroads of African American rhythms, microtonal harmonies, and eastern melodic inflections and improv concepts – in other words all the elements that the Greater Boston area has to offer with Berklee as its base…
I was walking down Inman Street in Cambridge the other day, from Inman Sq. to Central. As I approached Massachusetts Ave., I noticed an older woman sitting on the porch of a random elegant old home. She was looking…
Taking a moment to breathe in the freshly acrid aroma of cleaning solution, which is overpowered only
Airport by Alessio Romano
by dozens of double grande half-calf soy mocha lattes, I step into Boston’s infamous two-dollar amusement park. Having brought…
Every institution with a very strong identity is based on a precise and defined ideology and on an even more precise system of rules. If you want to see with your own eyes the distorted reality of an institution with a narrow ideology you have to devote at least two hours of your time at Starbucks.
Empire 2 by Alessio Romano
As night drops down his tarnished, black curtain,
And worn-out faces wear the brake light’s glow,
We sit captured in a terrible halt.
Like a heavy rock in a shallow pond,
All hopes tonight quickly…
