Judd Greenstein is among New York's most gifted younger composers. I extolled his piece Folk Music sometime in the early days of this blog, and have followed his work closely since then. I couldn't possibly have predicted, though, the latest turn his career has taken: Folk Music is now serving as the soundtrack for the Obama-Biden Tax Calculator. The recording is from the NOW Ensemble's recent disc on the New Amsterdam label. (Hat tip: Dan Johnson.) On Oct. 29, NOW plays with composer-vocalist Corey Dargel at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, on the same evening the Jack Quartet plays Xenakis quartets.
As regular readers know, I strive to be strenuously fair and balanced in political matters. In the interest of equal time, I offer this video of Sarah Palin's magisterial explication of the Wall Street bailout, with an ingenious, speech-based accompaniment somewhat in the manner of Steve Reich's Different Trains. The pianist is Henry Hey:
