Newsletter August 2005

Every time we add something new, you'll see a linked guide to it here, with our archive of past Newsletters.

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We now have over 60 pages devoted to Ives and his Universe Symphony, thanks in large part to the tireless Johnny Reinhard as he concludes a 19-year journey with the CD. His book and score are in the works. Check out our new interview with him about the project.. And if you don’t know about Charles Ives’ music, read our quick Ives primer pages. We think his music transcends genres, so if you’re a punk rocker or an e-raver you’re still not excused. Sorry, pal.

Reaction to our Ives Universe Symphony release is massively enthusiastic, almost without qualification. Words come from anyone from Time Out New York to College 500. We have posted three early reviews, and look forward to more once more commentators have had chance to digest this complex American music landmark. We’re still going all-out here, with the Japanese translation of Johnny Reinhard’s (32-page) CD booklet notes in the final editing phase, following those into Spanish, Italian, German and Russian.

Some things are sent to try us. We had an encounter with a 400lb corporate gorilla July 22. A combination of careless error by our (ex) Web server company with a resulting unannounced disconnection by the internet payment corporate giant Verisign took out our shopping cart and site E mail the evening of Friday 22 July. We didn’t realize until Monday morning after a deafeningly quiet weekend. It has taken us until today, August 1, to set up (again) new server, E mail, secure shopping cart and payment gateway (although it will take a few more days to be compatible with the Safari browser). No. there’s no point in going after them. Gorillas just look at you with a bored expression on their faces when you yell at them.

There’s an old music studio saying about recording engineers who erase a lead vocal track by mistake. They only do it once. Waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat keeps them on track (excuse the pun – usually, it’s a mistake in the track number that takes out the lead character). But one thing that often happens is that when the singer sings again, it’s even better. Let’s see if that works after this wipe-out for which we weren’t to blame. We hope to come back better.

Also, please pay attention: we posted big orange warnings on E mail pages telling visitors that the form wasn’t working but, judging by the incoming traffic when the forms were fixed but the warning still up, some of you sent us things. Please resend any words you want to get through. The site may have responded nicely and thanked you, but between July 22 and July 29 your message wouldn’t have got through. Apologies for boring you with these agonies, but while we apologize for the interruption we need to explain. That wasn’t all: our programming person landed in hospital with back issues as all this was starting up. He wishes to give thanks to wireless networks in the waiting room. It never rains…

The shopping cart is now working fully, and as ever securely. Unfortunately, it doesn’t load in Safari. We’re working to fix this and hope to be universally compatible in a few days. If you want to buy, please use Internet Explorer (not on the Mac) Firefox or AOL. Go to our Browsers help page for a discussion of browsers and how to download them for free.

Thanks for your patience…