Next week, as highlighted in a previous post, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova’s follow-up to Once—the indie musical that became 2007′s surprise hit (both the film and its soundtrack)—will finally be released after a fair amount of buzz and anticipation.

Fans, and there are many now following these once-obscure musicians turned Oscar winners, don’t have to wait until October 27 to hear the dozen tracks that comprise the duo’s new album, Strict Joy. NPR Music—arguably the best, all-encompassing music site on the Web, featuring live concerts, studio sessions, interviews, profiles, and more—is now offering an “Exclusive First Listen” of the entire album by The Swell Season (the duo’s post-Once moniker) until its official release. Read more…

“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”—Sergei Rachmaninov

Rob Gibson, executive and artistic director of the Savannah Music Festival, announced earlier this evening the lineup for the 2010 edition of the two-week, multi-venue musical celebration in March, and it’s arguably the most impressive, and diverse, roster of artists yet in the festival’s eight years.

After attending my first Savannah Music Festival last year—five concerts in about ten days (mostly of the classical music variety) that surpassed even my exceedingly high expectations—I didn’t think it could get much better. Until tonight’s lineup announcement, which will likely result in a severely depleted bank account by tomorrow afternoon (tickets go on sale Friday morning). But, as the 2009 experience demonstrated, it’s worth every penny. Read more…

“You’d like to be able to go to work and have everything be smooth, but there’s some weird artistic gene in some of us. It can feel like a curse, because it makes you push yourself to make things better and not allow them to be easy. That’s how you get the good stuff.”—Eddie Vedder

Music is, of course, one of the great forms of artistic expression. Music also influences, to some degree, the creation of all kinds of other art, inspiring artists across a variety of disciplines, including writers, painter, filmmakers, and other creative souls.

With that in mind, The Madness of Art introduces a new feature: “Listen Up!” Located in the right sidebar, between “Exhibit A” and “Hot Topics,” “Listen Up!” will feature a new song each week, so be sure to check back regularly to check out the latest musical selection. To browse the archive and hear previous picks, click on the link below the player. There is no rigid criteria to guide the selection of songs—just great music, new and old, that hopefully inspires a bit of creativity.

“In writing songs I’ve learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.”—Bob Dylan

Once was not nearly enough.

I don’t recall when or how I first discovered the music of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, but I do remember falling quickly for their sound well in advance of the movie that would catapult the seemingly shy duo into the spotlight. “Once,” the low-budget 2007 film—a modern musical, really—starring Hansard (frontman for the Irish band The Frames) and Irglova (classically trained Czech pianist and vocalist), added layers of context to the soundtrack I had been listening to repeatedly, daily, for some time, only increasing my evangelical crusade to convert everyone I knew into fans. Read more…

Some suggestions to satisfy your reading, viewing and listening appetite throughout the weekend… Read more…

“Every artist was first an amateur.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Conversation With Marcelo Daldoce,
Celebrating Women, Wine and Words on Canvas

For Marcelo Daldoce, a mostly self-taught artist from São Paulo, Brazil, the maxim “bigger is better” definitely applies.

His preference for large-scale paintings (mostly on 98-inch-tall-by-49-inch-wide canvases) has resulted in a series of simultaneoulsy imposing and enchanting nude female portraits. Size, in this case, matters. But it’s not just size that will have you gawking. His unique style—influenced by such disparate artists as John Singer Sargent and Jackson Pollock, shaped also by his own experience as an illustrator—yields lively, seemingly three-dimensional celebrations of the female form, accentuating the sensual, hinting at the erotic. His paintings, many of which are inspired by his girlfriend (and muse) Ali, combine realistic-yet-idealized lines and figures with playful splatters of paint, fluid brushstrokes and vibrant-yet-soft fanciful colors.

Daldoce’s portraitures evoke the essence of vintage pin-up artwork and echo elements of pop art. The latter impression can be attributed to the artist’s recurrent employment of words, as characters in their own right, in much of his work—perhaps the most visible way in which his “day job” influences his paintings. And Daldoce’s mastery of typography is immediately evident and unfailingly effective, his integration of words and phrases—sometimes nonsensical, others meaningful—always create another layer of suggestiveness, along with adding a distinctive stamp, to his portraits.

And while Daldoce is certainly adept with either watercolors or acrylics on his brush, it is another more unconventional medium that sets him apart, and what first brought him to my attention. Daldoce paints with wine. Yes, wine! He’s completed a series featuring his iconic female portraits using a variety of varietals—a different type of wine, from Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon to Chardonny (though he seems to prefer reds, and I couldn’t agree more), for each one. He also painted the portraits of four famous Brazilian sommeliers using wine to accompany an article in one of the country’s largest newspapers, Folha de São Paulo. Daldoce has also recently embarked on a new series of wine paintings. While the technique is unique, it is the amazing outcome that make his wine paintings noteworthy. Here’s the YouTube video that alerted me to this virtuoso (Bukowski would be proud, as long as a majority of the wine was consumed by the painter and not the painting, and Daldoce assured me that was indeed the case):

Marcelo Daldoce, who held a solo exhibition in a New York gallery in 2007 and one in Brazil the following year, is currently preparing for a show of his wine work in July. On the threshold of a major breakthrough, the 29-year-old artist recently took time to discuss the roots of his creativity, the inspiration for his ingenious work, his process and style, the struggles of balancing the demands of his job and his desire to paint, his ambition to improve, and much more with The Madness of Art. Read more…