Response to an article: Clam cleanup

web address:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2009/0110-clam_cleanup.htm

Biologists Clam Up Waterways To Determine Sources Of Pollution

In this article, a brilliant discovery about the clam, the small organism used to be our food items will be shared. For me this is one of the most interesting topics I've found today while reading the Science Daily.

Biologists discovered that they can use CLAMS to determine the toxin's sources in water. Clams are used as pollutant traps. These small organism clean the water in a natural way. They feed absorbing toxins in their tissues as they draw in water. Biologist place the clams in the rivers and streams are contaminate pollutants, which some you can see and some you cannot see such as pesticides, lead, arsenic and PCBs. Later on, they open the clams' shells and determine which kind of pollutant contained in those streams and rivers. This is a smart way to analyze the health of a stream or river.

This is a cool way to cleanup the environment, the clams become tiny pollutant detectives. We cannot imagine how amazing are these creature's ability. For example: the clams detected a banned pesticide in Maryland, buried years ago and no slowly leaking. By using clams, I believe these small organism will help scientists determine the toxins' sources in the water earlier to find solution for it. The earlier they find out the problem, the easier to solve it. To fix the pollution problems, that's costly to cleanup the polluted water. But nowadays, they are trying to find a new and inexpensive way to fix the problems. Clam is just one of the organism that scientists use in biological testing such as plant, animal, and microbial indicators.
From this article, I believe people have to rethink the role of animals or just organism such as clams.

Genre of music by composers in different eras

There are variety genres in classical music, which is each of them playing the vital role in general music, especially in classical music. In this article, the most significant and considerable genre, the Symphony will be discussed. For a century, the invention and development of the Symphony by composers through different eras are always the most interesting and argumentative topic for music critics in the world. In every period of classical music, there is a composer who is the norm who created the great inspiration to other composers in not only their time but also hundreds of years after that. Beethoven in Classical era, Tchaikovsky in Romantic period and Debussy in 20^th century music are the most important composers in their generation. Their symphonies are always the greatest classical works ever composed of all time.

In the classical period from 1750 to 1820, the Symphonies had three movements: a fast movement, a slow movement and later on another fast movement. Beethoven was the first composer dramatically expanded the symphony and put choir in to this genre. He expanded almost of his symphonies in four movements; especially his Symphony No.6 has five movements. His Symphony No.9 was written including vocal soloist part and choir in the last movement, turning it into a choral symphony. Later, Hector Berlioz, a French composer followed Beethoven and wrote Romeo and Juliette using soloist and choir in 1857. Beethoven is the composer who famous of his initialization of the leit motif in his Symphony No. 5. The short-short-short-long motif is very well-known, which called the Fate motif. This Symphony is one of the most popular and best-known compositions in all of classical music, which was described the symphony as “one the most important works of the time”.

With the rise of established professional orchestra, the symphony assumed more prominent place in concert from 1815 to 1910. The romantic music struggled to increase emotional expression and power to describe the truths, while extending the formal structure from the classical period. The new term Symphonic poem or Tone poem was used to describe a symphony which content of a poem, a story novel, a painting, and a landscape. Tchaikovsky was the only Russian Romantic composer who did not use oriental influences in his music. He preferred using folk tune melodies in his compositions. The melodies in his symphonies are always described the most beautiful, and most famous melodies in all music. They are notable for their immense elegance and gracefulness.

At the turn of the century, the classical music was divided into many different styles. There were variety trends such as: Modernism, atonality, neoclassicism and expressionism. The music in this period is shorter in form, highly colorful orchestration, and dissonant fragment melodies. Debussy emerged out to be a spearhead in France. His music is defined with a lot of different styles and influential from different composers. For instance: The “infinite arabesque” and complex counterpoint of Javanese gamelan, the stylization of nature in Japanese landscape prints, and the oriental influences of Russian composers.

What music means to me (part II)

Very long time ago, I found a clear answer for this question, which took a lot of time to find out. The first thing that comes to your mind might be “Is that too obvious that you are a musician so of course music means your job, your career, your future, etc.” I would answer: “Yes, it is” but for me there is much more than that.

There is a reason that I believe that music belongs to my life. I didn’t choose music, it chose me. I was luckily born in a family with music tradition, that I have right to be proud of. Both my grand-father and my dad are great musicians. Especially my dad is the one who loves music so much that he decided to teach me playing musical instrument even my mom had given birth to me. My dad loves my music and he plays music all day long when he stays at home. This is the way that makes me become a child that I can recognize a lot of classical pieces. In that way, because of a very simple reason “my dad loves this piece”, classical music becomes a part of my life and I find that how empty and boring the world can be in just one day without music. I listen to music anytime that I can: walking or cycling to school, having meals, taking a rest…

I found that I really love music more after studying at music school and summer music camp for children. Those were all great opportunities for me to understand and play music. It is no longer the music for me to entertain but I become a person who makes music and entertains my parents, my friends and people that I don’t know. But the feeling of making people smile and happy for me is indescribable. From the moment that I play music to people, the magic of music has changed my life.

Yes, music inspires me in so many ways. I’m not sure how it works; it sounds really miracle but for me it’s true. It changes gradually the way I think, the way I treat my parents, my friends, the way I see things around me. I realized that every day is a story, which can be happy or sad but I love it because I see my parents, my friends, strange people are all so adorable to me. Music helps me realize a lot of valuable things in life, makes me think about how to becomes a better person, how to make people around me feel happy.

More than that, music gives me a chance to dream and a chance to achieve my dream. With my favorite music I feel like my imagination is unlimited. I can play the cello with image in my mind that I’m playing in a garden with so many colorful flowers or I play for a very unique recital in Carnegie Hall, my dream concert. It can be whatever and wherever I’d love to be. But it’s not just imagination. Music gives me the chance to achieve it. It encourages me to practice every day, try my best to have further dream and achievements with music, my passion and my life.

Dr.Tony Macarome :D

It has been 3 months since I started studying in YSTCM and I really want to talk about one of my favorite teachers in this school. His full name is Tony Macarome Yue and no one in this conservatory can deny that every Tony's lesson bring his students the feeling of jollity and amazement. And I'm so happy that I'm one of his students.

I liked his teaching at the first time I was in his class. My impression is that Dr.Tony is big guy but he has smart eyes, smiley face and very nimble person. He plays the double-bass with left hand and for me that's so special. He played something Jazzy and I really love that. It sounds very playful and virtuoso. Sometimes, he plays the double bass and suddenly rush to the piano and play with happiness like a kid and sometimes he feels not enough then he sings for us. And his voice is so impressive, it could be supper high and supper low. Every time he sings, all students in class will laugh very loud. I can feel that he really wants to teach as much as possible, he has so many things to tell us that he cannot remember what should come first. And when he talk, he talk very fast with a lot of information and interesting things. For me, sometimes I can not understand all his words and just remember what is funniest thing that makes me laugh.

For me, Dr.Tony looks like a big bear with a double-bass as big as him. He always tell us very funny stories related to what we're studying. I feel so happy to listen to him and I'm always looking forward to study in his class once a week on Wednesday.

"The legend of 1900" Review

For me, "The legend of 1900" is one of the best movie films with Ennio Morricone's music. It won numerous prizes like David di Donatello for Best Music, Golden Globes for Best Original Score.
The movie is a story about a man named Danny Boodman T.D Lemon 1900. He grew up on the ship named Virginian. His presence was revealed when Danny, his foster-father dies in an accident while working. Discovering a passion for music, he teaches himself to play the piano without being able top reach the notes, and he soon becomes a virtuoso whose reputation spreads beyond the confines of the ship. His reputation as a pianist is so renowned that Jelly Roll, the person who invented Jazz wants to challenge 1900 to a piano duel. The music in this scene is very impressive with a very virtuoso part improvised by Jelly that makes people thought he will absolutely win the duel. But finally, 1900, a prodigy pianist won the duel with an original piece of such virtuosity that the metal piano strings become hot enough to light a cigarette, which 1900 then hands to Jelly, who has lost the duel.
The music sometimes make me feel so excited but sometimes makes me cry with a feeling of loneliness. 1900 is a very innocent man with a love at the first sight and when he plays the song named "Playing love". It is so touching that makes me have the desire to have a pure love like that.


The end for piano duel between 1900 and Jelly Roll

Qi Zhang's Organ Performance

After listening to her performance, there are a lot of things that makes me feel so excited. First thing is that she has amazed technique and eye-catching gesture. She has ability to totally control the complicated organ not only with her fingers but her foot also. More than that, she is very musical. She tried her best to create the sound of a orchestra on her organ, that's so amazing. But of course, she cannot really make the sound of a real orchestra even though she is the best organ player. The thing I like about this performing is that it is a new experience for an orchestra piece. It is different from the orchestra's and piano's version so it makes me very excited to listen to her performance. For me, Qi Zhang is a really amazed performance in her instrument.
There is few thing I don't like about this performance is that she played too busy and make audiences feel tired when listen for a long time. One of the reason is because of the composer of this piece, Prokofiev is really a virtuoso pianist so he wrote a very hard piece like this one. But a good performer is the person who can handle the hard piece become easy one. For this reason, I really believe that she can be a better player with more control in breath and take it easier. she need to create more space and listen like an audience. I feel like she plays for only her self, not for the listener.
But anyway, I really enjoy her performance. I bet she spent almost of her time to practice on her organ to make a perfect concert like this.

Music is my life

For me, using word to describe how music make me feel is so difficult because music become a part of my life such like breathing, eating, drinking...I cannot imagine what my life will be without music.

Music makes me happy. For a very long time, I've been listening to music to encourage myself, I feel more confident with music and believe what I do will be successful. Music helps me recover when I get stress and feel lonely. For instance, I find peace in Tchaikovsky's music. Beauty in melody and effective instrumentation are what I love in Tchai's music. His music makes me feel satisfy and happy with all I have.

More than that, music inspires me and helps me study more effectively. I can listen to classical music all day long with enthusiastic feeling. To illustrate, Jacqueline Du Pre is one of the greatest cellist to me. She was one of the reason why I chose cello to study. For me, Du Pre is always the best because I can feel not only her vehement passion to make music, but also her formidable technique in controlling the cello. The first time I've heard her playing on TV when I was small, I was very sure that I want to be like her, a legendary cellist.

To conclude, music is consolation and inspiration of my life.