In Brief: Octave of Easter Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• eighth blackbird is premiering their new project, The Only Moving Thing, which includes "Steve Reich’s major new 22-minute work, Double Sextet," consisting of the group playing live simultaneously against themselves on CD. We are so there for the Washington premiere (May 13, 7:30 pm), at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, and you should be, too. Flutist Tim Munro has some photos of the rehearsals for the world premiere in Richmond. [thirteen ways]


• Anne Midgette went down to Richmond to review the eighth blackbird premiere, writing that the group "embodies a slightly geeky spirit of earnestness." [Washington Post]


• Through a (somewhat annoyingly) supercilious comment at Jeremy Denk's blog, this very useful information: a Web site that has scans of all of the first editions of Chopin's music. It's an incredibly valuable resource, but a good scholarly edition, in which musicologists have dissected and sorted out all of the variants, is still important. [Chopin's First Editions Online]


• How do Cistercian monks outside of Vienna sign a record deal with Universal? By answering a YouTube ad, of course. [New York Times]


• "OK, I'll admit it, I've been kind of phoning it in on the blog for the last little bit. It's lame to blog about how you're too busy to blog (something I've called 'the Teachout method')..." Phil Ford, you almost made me spit coffee onto my keyboard. [Dial "M" for Musicology]


• Finally, WETA (90.9 FM) will be broadcasting concerts by the National Symphony, unfortunately not live and not single concerts complete. Every Wednesday at 9 pm One Wednesday a month, there will be a broadcast combining bits and pieces of various concerts. Next week, it is all Beethoven, the fourth and seventh symphonies and Emanuel Ax playing the third piano concerto. The performances were conducted by Ivan Volkov and Leonard Slatkin. [Washington Post]


• From Marc Geelhoed, the wonderful video embedded below, of Ionarts favorite pianist Alexandre Tharaud playing Couperin's Tic toc choc, with mind-blowing hip hop dancer Anthony Benichol and actor Boris Ventura Diaz providing visual interest. [Deceptively Simple]