I had the pleasure last night of seeing Glenn Kotche and the Kronos Quartet perform Kotche's new piece, Anomaly. Kotche's description of the piece in the liner notes is worth quoting at length.

After seeing a Kronos Quartet performance in early 2006, I got the idea to compose a string quartet. I wanted to do it from my perspective as a percussionist, treating the four members of the quartet like the varying relationships and roles of my limbs when I play the drum set. I also thought it would be interesting to arrange it with the addition of an optional drum set part. ...

My closest uncle, Eddie Kotche, died around the time of that Kronos performance.  I went home and improvised a short melody on the vibraphone. This would become the dominant, recurring theme in what would eventually be titled Anomaly. ...

My uncle was an anomaly. He had an incredible zest for life and an uproarious sense of humor despite being severely challenged throughout his life by cerebral palsy. ... After losing him, I began to think about my reliance on physical motion and coordination for my self-expression and livelihood, and about the dichotomy between our physical circumstances. ...

Although the origins of Anomaly are deeply personal...I wrote the piece to be broad in its emotional range and appeal. ... I wanted the individual instruments to experience both freedom and restriction. I wanted Kronos to be dependent on each other for the execution of certain melodies and musical passages. The main motif that appears in each movement is, for me, symbolic of the love and experience that those dear to us leave behind. ...

As the first piece I've composed outside of the realm of percussion, it is for me also an anomaly.

If you're in SF, there is another performance tonight at Herbst Theater. If you're into this sort of thing, check out Kotche's album Mobile, on the Nonesuch label. And for those looking for context, I've posted about Kotche before, in his role as the drummer for the band Wilco.

There's nothing better than chatting with customers...especially when you're reading their book at the same time. (OK, not at exactly the same time. You know what I mean.) Now on Everything TypePad, a brief interview with Alex Ross.  (And that, ladies and gentlemen, makes Ross the direct or indirect subject of three of the last five posts here. I'll move on soon, I swear.)

The aforementioned Alex Ross in The New Yorker on his blog...

Like many people, I started blogging out of an urgent need to procrastinate. Yet a nagging sense of possibility also drew me in. Classical music, my subject, was thriving on the Internet in unexpected ways. Not all blogs, I discovered, were devoted to cataloguing continuity errors in the films of George Lucas; a smattering of musicians, composers, and listeners were writing on music with intelligence and verve, revelling in the chance to express ideas that had no other immediate outlet.

The Standing Room liveblogged the City Arts & Lectures conversation with John Rockwell, Alex Ross and Linda Ronstadt.

8:13. Linda memorably describes Pavarotti's voice as like that of a lost child, abandoned by his mother at the side of the road, howling at desolation. Alex drinks some more water.

Sasha Frere-Jones takes it to indie rock:  "in the past few years, I’ve spent too many evenings at indie concerts waiting in vain for vigor, for rhythm, for a musical effect that could justify all the preciousness."

Jason Kottke interviews Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, author of The Rest is Noise, and author of a TypePad blog by the same name. 

When you have a repertory that goes from Hildegard von Bingen's medieval chant to Vivaldi's bustling Baroque concertos to Wagner's five-hour music dramas to John Cage's chance-produced electronic noise to Steve Reich's West African-influenced "Drumming," you're not talking about a single sound.

This one's for Lane Becker:  Bruce Springsteen covering Keep the Car Running, with Win & Regine from Arcade Fire.

So my first purchase last week from the new Amazon MP3 store was Pink Floyd's The Wall. It was on the front page, it was (and still is) priced at all of $8.99, the last recording of this I owned was a worn out cassette (and before that a scratched up LP), and I'm sure the last dozen times I'd heard the record I wasn't, you know, um, sober.

If you haven't heard it in a while, go get it. Download it, put it on your fancy iThing, plug in your noise canceling headphones, and thank Roger Waters for every minute. If you've misplaced your bong, burned out the black light and sold the album sleeve for a buck to the used record store, here are some links to get you through the tracks...

• The Wikipedia article on The Wall includes information about how one of the band members was fired after recording the album, the story about the fight over royalties owed to the school choir who performed on "Another Brick in the Wall," a song-by-song storyline of the album, descriptions of the live shows (yes, they did build a wall of cardboard bricks in front of the audience), some information about the movie (starring Bob Geldof) and a bunch more miscellaneous trivia. (I love that trivia sections are "discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.")

• YouTube has a ton of stuff, of course. Start with this search, but you'll find the original movie trailer and this crazy Lego version of The Wall concert.

• TheWallAnalysis.com is a complete site dedicated to, you guessed it, analyzing The Wall.

Sure, it's late 70s over the top theatrical prog rock. And sure, if you're even a remotely well-adjusted human being it's hard to relate to Pink. But I dare you to ignore the chill that goes up your spine in "Mother" when David Gilmour says to Pink "Of course mama's gonna help build the wall."

The current #1 track on Amazon's music store is 1234 from Feist. You probably know this as the soundtrack to the new iPod nano ad.

News to me, but Radiohead's catalog isn't available on iTunes. Instead, they're on ateaseweb.com, with full albums available in DRM free 320kbs MP3s. The statement from EMI is interesting: "iTunes insists that all its albums are sold unbundled, but 7digital doesn’t. Radiohead prefer to have their albums sold complete. The artist has a choice, and if they feel strongly then we respect that." (Via TRIN.)

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(un)filtered is a product of michael sippey. there are older things at sippey.typepad.com/filtered, with archives back to 2003, and even older things at stating the obvious.