In Brief

Who told the Dallas Stars they could win games? Grr. Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• It is likely that the overlap between musicians and those who played fantasy games in their youth is large -- er, not that I would know anything about that. In case we needed a reason to connect the two, Cory Doctorow directs us to a guide to using polyhedral dice to make random decisions in composing music. The comments are incredibly insightful -- Schoenberg and the serialists would not have wanted to use dice, but John Cage did. [Boing Boing]


• Matthew Guerrieri has posted a great response to Greg Sandow's recent article about the gentility of classical music. [Soho the Dog]


• Via Patty, perhaps this is what we can expect if we shake up the rules of classical concert etiquette? *shudder* [Oboeinsight]


• From Marc Geelhoed, the tragic story of the principal cellist of the Augusta Symphony Orchestra in Georgia. As reported in the Augusta Chronicle, David Reader was shot to death, apparently after a drug deal went bad. [Deceptively Simple]


• Peter Aidu plays Steve Reich's Piano Phase -- both pianos simultaneously. [Sequenza 21]


• From Musical America, the news that Bernard Holland will accept a buyout and retire from the New York Times. La Cieca exults. [Parterre Box]


• Speaking of buyouts, half the staff of the Washington Post is taking them, too. [DCist]


• The week has been filled with tributes to artist Robert Rauschenberg, who died on Monday of a sudden heart attack. Kriston Capps has a list of where you can see Rauschenberg's work around Washington. [DCist]


• Holy musicology! Ralph Locke -- Ralph Locke! -- will be blogging for a while this summer, replacing Phil Ford and Jonathan Bellman, who want a vacation or something. Worlds collide. [Dial "M" for Musicology]


• Via The Literary Saloon, The New Yorker has launched a blog about books. [The Book Bench]