Vassar Web Design pays tribute to our friend Kevin Davis. The page showcases Kevin’s work during his four years with the college. Inspiring designs, photographies and illustrations.

Now you can promote your product, event or service on the Visualgui.com’s homepage. Find out more about advertising opportunity and pricing on the advertise section.

Once in a while, I receive inquiries from various readers asking me the price for putting up a banner on my homepage to promote their upcoming events. I use the space mostly to promote my own work and occasionally support something I enjoy like a new CD. I want the banner to be changing to keep the site fresh and I also would like to experiment with the concept of ads are content: “Advertisements and promotions contribute to the experience you provide. Like any other content on your site, ads should be useful, relevant, and current.” Since I am making the ads part of my site, both the content and the design have to be approved by me.

To kick things off, I am offering $100 off for September. So contact me if you want to schedule an ad.

Jan Tschichold:

White space is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background.

Via Veerle

Advice from Miles Davis:

When you play music, don’t play the idea that’s there, play the next idea. Wait. Wait another beat, or maybe two, and maybe you’ll have something that’s more fresh. Don’t just play from the top of your head, but listen and try to play a little deeper. Don’t play what’s there. Play what’s not there.

A concert to commemorate 35 years since the end of the Vietnam War and remember the 9/11 victims. “Ode to Freedom” will present the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (KSOC), including around 100 professional musicians and singers from Ukraine, with participation of a community chorus from the Washington DC area and some Vietnamese singers from California.

When
September 11
6:30pm

Where
Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center
Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria campus
3001 North Beauregard Street
Alexandria, Virginia 22311

View poster

Lineup
Afro Bop Alliance – ’08 Latin Grammy winning/Grammy nominees Latin Jazz
Jason Moran & the Bandwagon – Triple Downbeat ‘Rising Star’ winner
The Bad Plus – Explosive indie-rock & Jazz fusion band
Tierney Sutton Band – 2-time Grammy nominated vocalist & ensemble

When
September 11
1pm-7pm

Where
Gateway Park
1300 Lee Hwy
Base of Key Bridge
Arlington, VA

For more info, visit rosslynva.org

Check out the new dean’s site I pulled together to introduce our new boss. I met with him briefly early Monday morning to create his first video. He also blogs. I already am impressed that he takes advantage of the web. He will bring a fresh vibe to the School of Business and I am very excited about that. Best of all, he has a beautiful family and an adorable little girl.

Yesterday my wife asked to get some fried tofu from Thanh Son so I took Cu Dao with me. I put him in the car and gave him a bottle. We listened to some Miles Davis and drove about twenty-five minutes to Eden. By the time we got there, Duke was already fell asleep. I didn’t want to wake him up nor did I want to leave him in the car to go buy some tofu. So my other option was to ask for help.

I pulled up into an empty space a few cars away from Thanh Son. I asked an elder woman standing outside if she could go in and buy me $10 tofu as I pulled out $20 from my wallet. She told me to go in and get it and she would keep an eye out for me, but I couldn’t leave my boy with a stranger. I spotted another woman coming into Thanh Son, but before I could even asked her she already shrugged as if I was begging money or something. I thought it was kind of hilarious. I was being dissed in my own community.

I didn’t give up though. I knew someone would kind enough to help me out. So another woman walked by, I stopped her and showed her where Duke was sleeping. She was a bit hesitated, but I handed her a $20 bill anyway. She smiled and went in to get me some fried tofu.

We took a short vacation to San Antonio for Dana’s annual family gathering. We flew out last Saturday and returned last night. Cu Dao’s first flying experience was great. He walked around the airport prior boarding; therefore, he napped on our arms as soon as we took off. He woke up two hours later and just hang out until we landed. He didn’t cry at all when we were landing. He was probably fascinated by the scene outside the window and didn’t realize that we were going down.

Dana’s family rented out two houses by the river. One of the houses was alway packed with more than 20 people. It was great to meet and hang out with the everyone ranging from 15 months (that’s Cu Dao) to 80 something. We rented our own hotel right downtown so we could escape all the craziness inside the houses.

Because of the heat and the changing temperature from inside air conditioner and the outside fire, Duke got a fever for two days, yet he was no less active. One of our cousins was a pediatrician so we had him monitored. He was doing fine when we flew back. We got back home a bit late last night and he was already asleep. He didn’t want to get up but we had to drag him to daycare. I dropped him off and he cried a little.

I felt in love with Bitches Brew even before I started getting into Miles Davis’s electric music. Something about the double album that pulls me in every time I listen to it. I still struggle to define what that is despite the countless number of time I had spent with it. When it comes to experiencing the music, all I can do is letting the “Bitches Brew” me and Miles mind-fucks me. Miles knows damn well how to fuck with your mind because he doesn’t just give it straight to your ears. On Bitches Brew in particular, you have to wait patiently to hear Miles. He only plays when he has something to say and when he does he blows your fucking mind. There is no escape route when “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down.”

In celebrating the 40th anniversary of its release, I would like to share my favorite passage from Greg Tate’s “The Electric Miles Part 1” discussing Bitches Brew. Tate writes:

On musical terms though, Bitches Brew is an orchestral marvel because it fuses James Brown’s antiphonal riffing against a metaphoric bass drone with Sly’s minimalist polyrhythmic melodies and electronic sounds. Bitches Brew can also be heard as a devilishly Milesish takeoff on John Coltrane’s spiritual energy music and that music’s saxaphone, percussion, and bass batteries, modal improvs, tone clusters, and yearnings, thus making the double-set rank as an act of comic blasphemy with Richard Pryor’s Preacher routines or with certain African genesis myths in playing prankster with God’s tongue by dragging the heavens back into the province of the vernacular—namely the streets—and the language of the streets, the dozens, sermons made scatologies which find their musical parallel in what funk did to gospel. The streets though aren’t just a funky run of avenues where mom-and-pop stores front for numbers runners and storefront churches pimp for jackleg preachers. They’re also a place of mystery and romance, and given that Miles knows them and their music inside out, it’s not surprising that the melodies on Bitches Brew croon, sway, and reveal themselves like those of such balladeers as Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder—all of those gorgeous melodies and harmonies have yet to overcome the precious corn of Tin Pan Alley in the ears of other improvising composers—excepting Zawinul, Cecil Taylor, and Bennie Maupin, whose overlooked The Jewel in the Lotus ranks beside Miles’s Great Expectations, Weather Report’s Mysterious Traveller, and Cecil’s Solo in channeling the charm of exotic musics into forms which are as tightly knit, free-flowing, and fetchsome as Stevie’s, Smokey’s, Curtis’s, and Marvin’s vocal arrangements.