From her blog post a few days ago, I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With:

But the truth is, I’ve never supported physical music as a consumer. As monumental a role as musicians and albums have played in my life, I’ve never invested money in them aside from concert tickets and t-shirts.

But I didn’t illegally download (most) of my songs. A few are, admittedly, from a stint in the 5th grade with the file-sharing program Kazaa. Some are from my family. I’ve swapped hundreds of mix CDs with friends. My senior prom date took my iPod home once and returned it to me with 15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet Underground and Yo La Tengo (I owe him one).

During my first semester at college, my music library more then tripled. I spent hours sitting on the floor of my college radio station, ripping music onto my laptop. The walls were lined with hundreds of albums sent by promo companies and labels to our station over the years.

So she didn’t “illegally download” most of her music, but she pretty obviously broke all sorts of copyright laws with all that sharing and ripping.

She concludes with this bit of inanity:

But I honestly don’t think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think we will pay for convenience.

What I want is one massive Spotify-like catalog of music that will sync to my phone and various home entertainment devices. With this new universal database, everyone would have convenient access to everything that has ever been recorded and performance royalties would be distributed based on play counts (hopefully with more money going back to the artist than the present model). All I require is the ability to listen to what I want, when I want and how I want it. Is that too much to ask?

So music is so meaningful to her, but she won’t cough up $5 to $15 for a CD or digital download?

And music is so meaningful to her, but the key criterion in her spending is convenience?

Does she support Kickstarter or PledgeMusic campaigns that might literally be coming at a make or break moment for an up and coming band?

Yes, Emily, you are asking too much.

But you just might get it. In some sort of reverse-1984 world, we might actually end up with that “new universal database” where “everyone would have convenient access to everything that has ever been recorded.”

And then what? How would talented young artists ever get their music heard by enough listeners to fund a modest tour?

I love listening to new music on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and other websites. I watch and listen to videos on YouTube. I post embeds from various sites to this blog and to Facebook. But it’s pretty obvious that the bands have put the music out there for those purposes.

But I still buy albums — either CDs or digital downloads — regularly. It’s easy: how much more convenience do the Emily Whites of the world think they are entitled to?

Click here for David Lowery’s compelling but long-winded open letter to Emily White.

I never got around to writing a specific review of the Del McCoury Band performing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, but that’s not because I didn’t love the show. I just never got my act together.

Ditto for last night’s stellar Trustees Theater performance by Paco de Lucia and his amazingly talented ensemble.

I wish I had the time to see even more shows than I did, but it’s tough with my regular teaching gig at Armstrong.

Here are my various posts and columns beginning with the most recent (updated on 4/11 with one last City Talk column).

• The Savannah Music Festival: An artistic success and a public relations dream
• Review of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Miguel Harth-Bedoya shines on final day of 2012 Savannah Music Festival
• Review of Zakir Hussain’s Masters of Percussion: Zakir Hussain and his Masters of Percussion: an exhilarating SMF performance
• A preview: Tonight at the Savannah Music Festival: Zakir Hussainâ€s Masters of Percussion
• A summary of the first couple of weeks at SavannahNow: Man About Town: Savannah Music Festival means too many choices, too little time
• Savannah Music Festival review: Pink Martini
• A preview at SavannahNow: Man About Town: Pink Martini brings soundtrack for any mood to Savannah Music Festival
• A review: Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt: a masterful Savannah Music Festival performance — includes the 24-song set list
• A preview at SavannahNow: Man About Town: Lovett, Hiatt highlights of Savannah Music Festival’s first week
• Savannah Music Festival review: Bela Fleck & the (original) Flecktones
• New commercial for Savannah Music Festival features world class musicians Wynton Marsalis, Daniel Hope, David Finckel and Wu Han

Here’s that promotional video:

I didn’t include here every post that I mentioned the SMF in. Click here if you’re interested in that list.

I also posted links to chamber music shows from this year’s festival on NPR Music: here, here, here, here, and here.

But here’s another NPR piece from a couple of days ago: Milos Karadaglic And The Power Of A Dusty Old Guitar.

There seems to be a kink in the NPR website at the moment that’s preventing me from scrolling through all the text, but the link to listen to the performance seems to be working just fine.

Here’s what the SMF program online had to say about Karadaglic and his performance in Savannah:

This is the Savannah debut of Montenegro born, 27-year old prize-winning guitarist Milos Karadaglic, who has established himself as one of today’s most gifted young classical guitar virtuosos. A darling of the 2011 BBC Proms, Milos recent engagements have also included recital debuts at Wigmore Hall in London and the Lucerne Festival, and concerto debuts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and English Chamber Orchestra.

And here’s a great video of Karadaglic performing a Tiny Desk Concert on NPR:

The program airing today (you can listen at the above link) was recorded at the Telfair Academy on March 28th.

It’s a 62-minute performance of Anton Arensky: String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 35 and Tchaikovsky: Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70 (for string sextet).

The performers include:
Daniel Hope, violin
Philip Dukes, viola
and the following from the Arensky ensemble:
Benny Kim, violin
Josephine Knight, cello
Keith Robinson, cello
Carla Maria Rodrigues, viola

From NPR’s description:

In this program, Hope and his handpicked group of players begin with a musical memorial to Tchaikovsky and close with music by the master himself. When Tchaikovsky died in 1893 at age 53, he left more than a few young Russian composers devastated. Sergei Rachmaninov responded with a brooding, elegiac piano trio dedicated to Tchaikovsky’s memory. Anton Arensky went one step further in his Second String Quartet, borrowing one of Tchaikovsky’s best-loved melodies (from the song “Legend”) to serve as the emotional heart of the piece. There’s a palpable air of solemnity in Arensky’s music, written for the non-traditional ensemble of violin, viola and two cellos. Arensky later revamped his three-movement piece by extracting the central movement, a set of variations on Tchaikovsky’s song, and beefing it up into a stand-alone piece for string orchestra.

Go to the link to listen and to read more. As I keep noting, this is amazing PR for the entire city.