the big time

And when I say bombarde, I mean the guy on the left

Oh, and btw, there is no way that microphone is on.

de nube

Alex Ross weighs in on getting your music from the Cloud.

I had this conversation at the concert the other day, picking up an Andy May CD, which I was doing because these things are much harder to come by than they used to be, and you have to seize the opportunities where you find them. The album is Happy Hours (Fellside 224), you can download it from iTunes where it's filed under Singer/Songwriter, even though there's only one song on the album and Andy May himself neither sings it nor wrote it.

You can download it from Amazon, where at least it's filed under the largely meaningless but not un- useful catchall of Folk. You can also buy the CD from them, for $22 direct or via third parties new (starting at $11) or used (starting at $20).

You'll find it on Spotify for free. You have to sort through the albums of another guy with the same name, but okay. Once you find it, all the tracks are there in order. (And track order does matter if you're listening to more than one track.)

I'm not going to get all wistful and blather on about the good old days when you could and did spend several  hours browsing bins and shelves in record stores, and one or two of those stores might even have had a section dedicated not just to bagpipes, but to Northumbrian smallpipes. But if you click on the Related Artists button on Spotify, you end up in a pretty big ballpark of vaguely related celtic-y folk records, which might be a highland pipe rock band or a solo singer of muckle sangs or an Irish fiddler from Brooklyn or a band from Belfast. Never mind that the Actually Related Artists are all up on Spotify, too: Jez Lowe, Kathryn Tickell, High Level Ranters, Cut and Dry...

So okay, basically you end up in the old shop circa 1998. Only if it was run by people who had no idea what anything was.

So much for efficiency. Spotify should probably read the liner notes. Or at least look at a map.

sundry items

So the final free audio-only webcast from the Met is I Puritani this Tuesday, April 29 at 7:30 ET here. That's Peretyatko, Brownlee, Kwiecien, Pertusi.

Arte has this series about Juilliard starting tomorrow. The excerpts they've posted are US-accessible, so maybe the rest of it will be as well, who knows.

BBC 3 Composer of the Week was Handel in London all week long, so you know that means lots of opera bits. These episodes tap out soon on iPlayer, so jump in quick if you wish to begin at the beginning.

Back in February Sting tried out material from The Last Ship, his theater piece about the (demise of the) shipbuilding industry in the north of England, at the Public Theater in NYC, and PBS has posted up the video. The cranks in the Trad Office at the Noise Ministry say Haven't there been songs on that topic around since forever and didn't Louis Killen pretty much sing them all? But really this is all about Kathryn Tickell there in the wayback lending the smallpipes and fiddle action.

PVC piping

I had a correspondent once whose email signoff was "Recycle old pets: make bagpipes", but tempting as that sometimes is when the Thirdfloorian overlords decide to play Ten Tigers from Kwangtung at 3 in the morning... Here's a duct tape and pvc option. (via BoingBoing)

Orfeo in Shetland

Since these are the days for traffic between this place and the other. I will only point out possible causal relationship, in this version, between instrument and outcome. Also the cool linguistic fragment in the refrain, which is thought to be Norn.

via Mudcat

KING ORFEO

Der lived a king inta da aste
Scowan urla grun
Der lived a lady in der wast
Whar giorten han grun oarlac

Dis king he has a hunting gaen
He's left his Lady Isabel alane

"Oh I wis ye'd never gaen away
For at your hame is dol an wae

"For da king of Ferrie we his daert
Has pierced your lady to da hert"

Tuesday morning buzz

Find more artists like Blowzabella at Myspace Music

earthquake springlek

That isn't really what it's called, I just like those two words together.

West Thirdflooria also hearts Tigerlily

Monday posting from the Ministry of Noise

Cillian Vallely, Port na bPúcaí