What are Your Musical Faves of 2010?

With the GRAMMY-award nominations for 2011 pending announcement tomorrow night at 10pm and a slew of best-of lists pouring in from primarily U.K. magazines (see entry and also "most popular" sidebar), I thought this might be an ideal time to solicit some of your recommendations for best-of albums throughout 2010. Also, with the holiday season right around the corner, we had the idea to round up your suggestions, and post a comprehensive entry to serve as a dashboard of CD gifts for the avid music lover in your circle of friends or family. Down with lame gifts - up with good music. We're all music fans here, I think we can establish a strong circle of trust.

I'll start:

Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Record
The National, High Violet
LCD Soundsystem, This is Happening
Yeasayer, Odd Blood
The Walkmen, Lisbon
The New Pornographers, Together
Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
Mumford and Sons, Sigh No More
Sarah Jarosz, Songs up in her Head
Shooter Jennings, Black Ribbons

What you got?

Chaise Lounge: The Wolf Trap Interview

Smart, slick, and smooth. Three operative words to describe the musical styling of D.C. based jazz sextet, Chaise Lounge. Fronted by film composer/guitarist Charlie Barnett and vocalist Marilyn Older, these guys are making their Barns debut, and after speaking with them for about 30 minutes, it is abundantly clear that they are giddy to be headlining our humble space. And we're equally as excited!

This group of superbly talented musicians straddle the line between retro and contemporary with a blend of rearranged pop tunes and theatrical, cinematic feeling original compositions. If you're lucky, they'll dazzle you with their inimitable cover of The Talking Heads "Burning Down the House". Barnett and Older were a blast to chat with, and I'm thrilled to offer you the full length interview below via SoundCloud. Enjoy, and come out to The Barns tomorrow night for a night to remember.
Chaise Lounge: The Wolf Trap Interview by Wolf_Trap

How Can we Connect with you Further?

Social media is obviously really hot right now, and the Wolf Trap communications and marketing department is pouring a lot of staff resources into making sure we are effectively connecting with you through these channels. From our offices in the Center for Education, we are all extremely passionate about social media -- mainly because of the connections that are possible -- direct, candid engagement on a regular basis.

We're thrilled by the relationships we've forged and always look forward to your feedback on our artist interviews, blog entries, photo albums, and all the other content we create on a daily basis. Currently, our network of social media platforms skews primarily towards our Filene Center and Barns performances, as well as relevant industry news. We are also considering social media efforts for some of our additional programs, and are curious if you'd come along for the ride. We wonder if you realize the many other aspects of Wolf Trap that fall under our four pillars such as:

• Our own Grammy-nominated, in-house opera company;
  
• The broad array of arts education programs spanning from early childhood to adulthood, offered here in DC and in many markets around the country;
  
• Our development/membership department (giving options, our young professionals group, special events, etc.);
  
• A very involved CEO who remains passionate about commissioning new works and the important role the performing arts can play to inspire efforts toward environmental sustainability.

Would you be interested in learning more about the many facets of the Wolf Trap Foundation through an expanded set of social media presences (for example, a Facebook page specifically devoted to Wolf Trap education)? Would you like more information from us via social media? Please take a moment to share your thoughts to help guide our efforts moving forward. At the end of the day, it's all about improving our connection with you, our loyal patrons and fans.

And I'm sure you've noticed in the past few months, our existing social spaces have brought you Wolf Trap specific web video, 2x monthly artist interviews, artist factoid/video surrounding each upcoming performance, and a slew of contests and giveaways. Do you have any suggestions for additional performance related content? What would you like to see more/less of?

While we're on the topic of Facebook - did you see this news? Crazy to think that we're in a time where we could see the end of print news and also witness both the birth and the fall of traditional email.

Wolf Trap: At A Glance - October (Video)

Wolf Trap's C&M dept has yet another highly talented multimedia intern for the fall who is helping us tackle a variety of projects, including Wolf Trap: At A Glance, our online video series that showcases the best in performance and event activity from the previous month. October's version is one of the best yet, as it captures HD content from actor/musician Jeff Daniels (think The Squid and the Whale, Arachnaphobia, Terms of Endearment, Dumb & Dumber), 16 year-old jazz/pop phenom Nikki Yanofsky, and highlights from our 3rd annual 5k run which boasted the highest attendance in the event's history. Please check it out here! The Jeff Daniels content is particularly entertaining with a story about his experience getting shot by Clint Eastwood in the movie, Bloodwork.

MySpace Re-Emerges with Redesign and Fresh New Concept

Only 1/5 of you cares about this when measured up against Facebook's 500 million users (MySpace has roughly 100-130 million users), but if you're part of that population, you might want to take notice of MySpace's new business model that CEO Mike Jones says "pulls us out of the social networking category" to become a social entertainment destination. Throughout the next 30 days, users can expect a series of major overhauls, including a total streamline of home pages for a less cumbersome and clunky user experience.

Obviously, Facebook is entirely too dominant for anyone to compete in their arena, so it makes sense for MySpace to go in a different direction, even if does throw them into another pretty saturated category, that of general entertainment. Does this mean they're going to try to compete with YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo to capture a piece of their audience share? Maybe the company's new goal is to exist on a much smaller level? It's tough to say at this point, but I like the idea that I now know what MySpace stands for, whereas before I had no clue why I needed to keep up my page or even visit the site in the first place. There are still some kinks to work out, but I like where MySpace is headed...maybe I'll devote some time tonight to breathing new life into my account.

The AP via NPR has the full story here.