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Spring 2024

Music

Fall 2009

Video: Poised for playing

Can trumpet players improve by changing the position of their feet and body? At Washington State University, honors student Leah Jordan and music professor David Turnbull measured trumpet students’ breathing and playing to analyze the difference a change of posture can make.

“Anyone who has taken music lessons has probably absorbed enough instructions about posture to feel like a raw recruit at basic training: Stand straight! Head up! Toes forward!

Leah Jordan, who is starting her senior year at Washington State University, says not to worry about forcing yourself into the “proper” position for playing an instrument. In fact, she says you’ll probably play better … » More …

Winter 2009

Mountains On Our Backs

carcrashlander-cover

Carcrashlander (Cory Gray, Brian Wright ’02, Alexis Gideon, Cliff Hayes, and Jessica Wright ’02)

Jealous Butcher Records, 2008

 

Nestled in the generally indescribable genre of indie music, Carcrashlander challenges the listener by continuing to venture into experimental music. In their most recent album, Mountains On Our Backs, the group combines basal vocals and keyboards with wildly discordant guitar riffs and deep percussion.

The band began as a project by vocalist Cory Gray. With the addition of drummer Brian … » More …

Fall 2006

A home for music

You don’t always need an address to find the Friel House. Just follow the music.

A short walk from campus, a group of music-minded students have found a home on C Street. The house looks small from the curb, but its three stories shelter seven students, and still have room for a formal dining room, a large kitchen with a breakfast nook, a living room, and a library.

The house is named for the Friel family, and for 54 years was home to Washington State University basketball coach Jack Friel and his wife, Catherine.

Catherine Friel died in 2003. Last year, her family agreed to … » More …

Winter 2001

Arts for all

“WOULDN’T you like to write music for someone famous like NSYNC?” a Clarkston High School student asked Greg Yasinitsky.

Tough crowd.

But Yasinitsky, a Washington State University music professor and jazz studies coordinator and a nationally recognized composer, arranger, and saxophonist, can handle it.

“We’re in the only field where we have to compete with dead people for jobs. In jazz, everyone can buy a John Coltrane CD. Why buy yours?” he says.

Yasinitsky reflected on the first of his three years as composer-in-residence at Clarkston High (CHS), sponsored by the Commission Project of New York. He received the project’s inaugural Washington state residency in … » More …

Winter 2002

A common reader: Trouble in Dusty Gulch

I really should be more worried about this. It’s my living, after all. For 20 years I’ve been presenting a kind of music so wildly varied in time (seven centuries and more), in style (Morris dances, Joplin rags, Mahlerian stairways to heaven, Copland cowboy ballets), and in instrumentation (shawms and zithers along with the violins and cellos), that the term “classical” is as inadequate in describing it all as calling the United States of America, Dusty Gulch, Nevada, just to avoid the complexities. But we call the music Dusty Gulch anyway, and there’s trouble in Dusty Gulch. Always has been, to tell you the truth.

… » More …