tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-108435302024-03-05T02:21:27.538-05:00Star WhispererPoetry, music and arts commentaries by <a href="http://bit.ly/1aFozKy"> DarkViolin</a>
<br>A <a href="http://bit.ly/19Dyw7d"> Knowlengr</a> siteknowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-88303171832005699012013-08-23T12:00:00.001-04:002015-08-11T21:50:48.913-04:00Many Voices of Marian McPartland Now Silenced<div style="border-bottom: solid #4F81BD 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 4.0pt 0in;">
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A musical voice can refer to a singer like Tony Bennett. Or it can refer to a voice in an orchestra of voices -- like Arturo Sandoval's trumpet.</div>
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In the case of the late Marian McPartland, several voices that have sung together in perfect harmony have been silenced. </div>
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It is a big loss in our small town.<br />
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The Port Washington (NY) resident who died on 20 August had been known to some as a jazz pianist, to others as an educator, record producer (Halcyon Records), and composer -- and to still others as the host of a long-running NPR radio show. That show, which aired from 1978 until 2010, and its precursor show on WBAI that began in 1964, introduced many listeners to jazz. "Piano Jazz" was heard on 200 radio stations around the world, and focused mainly on pianists, but included jazz vocalists and other instrumentalists as well.</div>
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"Piano Jazz" built the largest audience for Ms. McPartland, but she was a capable musician herself who was drawn in her formative years to the most inventive dimensions on the jazz scene. Hers was a career that spanned her time entertaining Allied troops during World War II and interviewing luminaries like Ramsey Lewis. She continued to record albums like the "<a href="http://amzn.to/12vWgs6" target="_blank">Single Petal of a Rose: The Essence of Duke Ellington</a>" (2000) and to perform with other jazz greats such as Dave Brubeck.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3CE6Qq1b6U8cbfE0GAZffionc64v_Q4XrLULyd7RBttv4AlyUQf2MLYgqo4zbkUH2U0mxCB-REcmW7ozSmQkJp3u1_DYioWLEztnsvGrDyPCWtXCcdupM7dP8E2MS2hREN1RuUA/s1600/250px-Marian_McPartland_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3CE6Qq1b6U8cbfE0GAZffionc64v_Q4XrLULyd7RBttv4AlyUQf2MLYgqo4zbkUH2U0mxCB-REcmW7ozSmQkJp3u1_DYioWLEztnsvGrDyPCWtXCcdupM7dP8E2MS2hREN1RuUA/s1600/250px-Marian_McPartland_2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">McPartland in Florida (credit Wikipedia Commons)</td></tr>
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In 2006 Ms. McPartland hosted Arturo Sandoval on "Piano Jazz." <a href="http://bit.ly/175eZxY" target="_blank">Sandoval, who performed at Port Washington's Landmark last past April</a>, was featured playing with McPartland on the broadcast. A few short years earlier and Port audiences might have been treated to such a duet at the Landmark.</div>
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Listen to some of <a href="http://n.pr/1az1Cbd" target="_blank">Marian McPartland's compositions at an NPR compilation here</a>. Hear her playing with the likes of Elvis Costello, Peggy Lee and Sarah Vaughan. But to truly understand the breadth of her vision, listen to her tribute to Rachel Carson, in which she combined her love of music and an environmentalist's reverence for the planet. </div>
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A planet that is smaller without her in it.<br />
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-@darkviolin<br />
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This story was first published at <a href="http://bit.ly/16Voujz" target="_blank">Port Washington Patch.com</a>.<br />
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Postscript </h2>
I wrote this tribute in 2013. Today I noticed that my hometown NPR station was still airing her work.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXRi7CmuGWdlxy697On3rs6hadcGd6-enph87bD62jJINoEPJAw-BfW9Hpolb_QePAakINBG1SRhY7rSh-xbbqZI5IBHLBDH_KuRi-xrEQlmMJJvFOZjWKWAOhiGmSHJsYxCeUZQ/s1600/marian-mcpartland-20150811.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXRi7CmuGWdlxy697On3rs6hadcGd6-enph87bD62jJINoEPJAw-BfW9Hpolb_QePAakINBG1SRhY7rSh-xbbqZI5IBHLBDH_KuRi-xrEQlmMJJvFOZjWKWAOhiGmSHJsYxCeUZQ/s640/marian-mcpartland-20150811.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Read other 140 byte eulogies <a href="http://bit.ly/15h1cCh" target="_blank">in the Twitterverse</a>. </h4>
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knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-19147281718895667492013-08-09T20:11:00.000-04:002013-08-09T20:30:55.429-04:00Nadeem Aslam: "The Opposite of War is Not Peace"<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3WKxDHO_Zml4HwWCG_FsaADM8zaGJGXXtO7EhYxqI9MZoT0pmuvpqR4QWQV4Q2jG-I9ogpzpxmOw3uRkLcElqPCFQmFHX_jhtUnbN70PHlS0JZmr2SV8pa3OKBT9Q-nCVBM8PnQ/s1600/blind-mans-garden-cover-knopf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3WKxDHO_Zml4HwWCG_FsaADM8zaGJGXXtO7EhYxqI9MZoT0pmuvpqR4QWQV4Q2jG-I9ogpzpxmOw3uRkLcElqPCFQmFHX_jhtUnbN70PHlS0JZmr2SV8pa3OKBT9Q-nCVBM8PnQ/s200/blind-mans-garden-cover-knopf.jpg" title="The Blind Man's Garden by Nadeem Aslam (cover image)" width="134" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Blind Man's Garden</td></tr>
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The full quotation from <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/jan/26/nadeem-aslam-life-in-writing" target="_blank">Nadeem Aslam'</a>s <i><a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/book/220829/the-blind-mans-garden-by-nadeem-aslam" target="_blank">The Blind Man's Garden</a> </i>(@AAKnopf): </div>
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"The opposite of war is not peace but civilization, and civilization is purchased with violence and cold-blooded murder. With war."</blockquote>
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The <i>New Yorker's</i> "Briefly Noted" reviewer judges the writing to be "visceral but exquisite, emotionally affecting yet unsentimental."</div>
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An excerpt:</div>
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<i>"Rohan looks out of the window</i>, his glance resting on the tree that was planted by his wife. It is now twenty years since she died, four days after she gave birth to Jeo. The scent of the tree's flowers can stop conversation. Rohan knows no purer source of melancholy. A small section of it moves in the cold wind—a handful of foliage on a small branch, something a soldier might snap off before battle and attach to his helmet as camouflage."</div>
knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-24941229310124199732013-07-14T18:11:00.000-04:002013-07-14T18:11:30.966-04:00Ex-Situ: The Violin<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhxtEqQhQf7xvlVqc_a24JRVAqAFVik4fSt-iy-C5GytQ5tDqDdIS4tvtu0LK103hzuxA8dvZR5jvSsdYhyVVuwjR9dQ_Bk70gyy8NtYHPgmW2Xd7zLEHyWfvSgmT0TfbZAevMIw/s1600/ex-situ-the-violin-525px.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhxtEqQhQf7xvlVqc_a24JRVAqAFVik4fSt-iy-C5GytQ5tDqDdIS4tvtu0LK103hzuxA8dvZR5jvSsdYhyVVuwjR9dQ_Bk70gyy8NtYHPgmW2Xd7zLEHyWfvSgmT0TfbZAevMIw/s1600/ex-situ-the-violin-525px.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Promo for "The Violin" by Anna Clyne and Josh Dorman</td></tr>
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As part of New York City's <a href="http://bit.ly/18WwvFC" target="_blank">River to River Festival</a>, the <a href="http://bit.ly/18i7DJ2" target="_blank">Original Music Workshop</a> presented "The Violin." The Original Music Workshop describes such events as those that:</div>
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. . .take place in unexpected spaces, away from the Williamsburg site where OMW is constructing its heralded future home, set to open in 2014. EX-SITU combines acoustic design, installation work, and auditory experiments from renowned performers and composers.</blockquote>
As for "The Violin," which this reviewer, alas, did not see:<br />
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The Violin is a suite of 7 pieces for multi-tracked violins and films – 45 minutes in total. The team is comprised of Anna Clyne, composer (Composer in residence with the Chicago Symphony); Josh Dorman, artist; Cornelius Dufallo, violin; Amy Kauffman, violin. The event will include surround sound and four channel film.</blockquote>
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The <i>New York Times</i> Steve Smith was in attendance and <a href="http://nyti.ms/1bApsSm" target="_blank">offered this review</a>:</div>
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45-minute sequence of solos and duets in memory of her mother. The players were swaddled, and sometimes engulfed, in a haunting chorus of recorded violins. Minimalist rhythm patterns regularly reminded you that you were listening to a contemporary piece. But Ms. Clyne’s elegiac melodies, throaty timbres and ghostly intimations of Bach’s solo-violin music harked back to an older tradition, recalling English string-orchestra works of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Tippett. The performance was eloquent, the music deeply moving. Overhead, during four of the seven movements, gently whimsical films by Josh Dorman, in which archaic images of people, animals and machines floated through impossible, cloudlike pastel landscapes, complemented the tone of the performance without literally interpreting the music. . . </blockquote>
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Composer <a href="http://bit.ly/1amhtGY" target="_blank">Clyne</a>'s previous works include:</div>
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<li><i>Within Her Arms</i> (2008–2009) for string ensemble</li>
<li>"<i>rewind</i>" (punctuation removed for HTML) (2005–2006) for orchestra and tape (optional)</li>
<li><i>Spangled Unicorn</i> (2011) for brass ensemble and tape</li>
<li><i>Rapture</i> (2005) for clarinet and tape</li>
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<br />knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-757644971219580642013-06-22T18:15:00.003-04:002013-07-14T16:23:31.274-04:00Violinist as Orchestra Symbol<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLOqntrrcDMwPWfp4Ej8StZ6_v5E5Io34Zj1eKRAevOWX5lOP93WYwE5l-hSFF6uEs6ta6sPukyCJKb0-xiyBkOnfaNWmT6JiydGDxHRsMfGEaQGA5W2OC1LJceCIhMmVAoWIiLQ/s1600/erykah-badu-with-brooklyn-phil-member-by-gabriele-stabile-201306100001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLOqntrrcDMwPWfp4Ej8StZ6_v5E5Io34Zj1eKRAevOWX5lOP93WYwE5l-hSFF6uEs6ta6sPukyCJKb0-xiyBkOnfaNWmT6JiydGDxHRsMfGEaQGA5W2OC1LJceCIhMmVAoWIiLQ/s640/erykah-badu-with-brooklyn-phil-member-by-gabriele-stabile-201306100001.jpg" width="446" /></a></div>
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The 10 June 2013 issue of the <i>New Yorker</i> featured a photograph by Gabriele Stabile of musician Erykah Badu and a violinist. In the periodical's "Goings on About Town," the violinist is unnamed, anonymous, but represents the Brooklyn Philharmonic with whom Badu was to play later in the month.<br />
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knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-37740787505640230592013-03-17T16:37:00.003-04:002013-03-17T16:38:38.260-04:00Very Short Fiction as Poetry?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaderYNuHb8wOqOf6mfFSGvH-MMyUmcGQRUcas4MQ0SGaagmf8zVeXAZ7cn6y2ic79cGTAbrdVoSMHmB75gt9i04KJgU9TnKYg9qu3nhibI0evRSxH-L4O5B2ilBqBg7jyrPvo3A/s1600/james-wood-on-jamie-quatro.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaderYNuHb8wOqOf6mfFSGvH-MMyUmcGQRUcas4MQ0SGaagmf8zVeXAZ7cn6y2ic79cGTAbrdVoSMHmB75gt9i04KJgU9TnKYg9qu3nhibI0evRSxH-L4O5B2ilBqBg7jyrPvo3A/s1600/james-wood-on-jamie-quatro.PNG" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So suggests the <i>New Yorker's</i> James Wood in a <a href="http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2013-03-11#folio=072" target="_blank">review</a> (pay wall) of <a href="http://jamiequatro.com/book/" target="_blank">Jamie Quatro’s book</a> of short stories (New Yorker 3/11/13). He writes:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Short fiction is closer to poetry than to the novel, and very short fiction is even closer. Quatro has a poet’s compound eye for small forms, passing phrases, useful repetitions, fleeting images. In “Caught Up,” she balances impossible purity and breathing, blasphemy, beautifully taking the religious resonance of the title and subjecting it to a sexual renovation that retains a suggestion of the religious: “my wrists pinned over my head” is certainly erotic, but it also sounds a little like an erotic crucifixion. She does something similar with “Imperfections,” a compactly eloquent two-page story that functions as a companion piece to “Caught Up.” It begins in the middle of things: “I want you to meet my wife, he said. We need to tether this -- whatever this is -- to the space-time continuum.” “This” is some kind of affair, barely begun, between a married woman and a married man. . . “</span></div>
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knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-18912809211492522772013-02-06T00:58:00.001-05:002013-02-13T21:43:17.460-05:00The Hum in Barenboim's Goethe<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Friend Brian thought I should revisit the 9th -- that perhaps there was something I had overlooked in earlier listens. He thought a live performance might better focus my attention. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He was right. It took seeing the 9th at a recent Carnegie Hall performance with the Barenboim-led <a href="http://www.west-eastern-divan.org/" target="_blank">West-Eastern Divan Orchestra</a> and the <a href="http://www.rider.edu/wcc/events/westminster-symphonic-choir-beethovens-symphony-no-9" target="_blank">Westminster Choir</a> to persuade me. Yet the experience demanded much of listeners, as it exposed contrasts along many dimensions. The more one thought about the librettist, composer, this particular conductor and this particular orchestra - the more daunting seemed the task of being receptive to all those cues and cross-currents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Illustrating different stages of Beethoven’s career, the polished ensemble-like 2nd symphony was a delightful appetizer designed to amuse an enlightened nobility. The 2nd is a musical Oscar Wilde’s <i>The Importance of Being Earnest</i>. The 9th is Beethoven’s <i>King Lear,</i> cast for a bigger stage – indeed mustering greater force from more instruments. For instance, the 9th calls for trombones not used in the 2nd, fewer strings, only 2 oboes instead of 4, and a contrabassoon. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoi9xxSGDxGFoF7uMklF_k7gyd8ZkJYX-fC06G8rGm66NBiushtiwebkPr9u1t36D835EXBq8w83nElzO4WlcViNaiwi6xWfVUAZVSrFTY-yo4e8Zo9-4KeTbZUiLC_bpdcbUu7w/s1600/Div%C3%A1n_Este-Oeste_2005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoi9xxSGDxGFoF7uMklF_k7gyd8ZkJYX-fC06G8rGm66NBiushtiwebkPr9u1t36D835EXBq8w83nElzO4WlcViNaiwi6xWfVUAZVSrFTY-yo4e8Zo9-4KeTbZUiLC_bpdcbUu7w/s1600/Div%C3%A1n_Este-Oeste_2005.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Barenboim rehearsing West-Eastern Divan Orchestra - 2005 (Wikipedia)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Singers </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For me, one long ago trained as an instrumentalist, singers were once an alien species that thought it could make music using only bodies. (Never mind the whole instrumentalist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism" target="_blank">angle</a> from philosophy). When my high school orchestra had joint concerts with the choir, it was a jarring ear-opener. In pop music, a different ethic applies; everyone is expected to sing, and a variety of singing styles (and intonation accuracy) is not only tolerated by cultivated. This laxity doesn't apply in the classical genre. Singers are held to the same standards as instrumentalists, and have a different cultural upbringing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Instrumentalists, you might say, were raised in Haifa, and vocalists in Ramallla.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOfOa6KIWZEZnkBEYm0tD2phO_L6vlaB25-NDJSfRnjLbJhVxMuFPQyFCjGvW0IRVpkgPOnoG3JdR9d-SBfBFKsxahV7mCdfa1BJEFgT89Nhwo-QWTk_5020wJn2NOnptddMDE1g/s1600/westminster-choir-2013-02-03+15.01.25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOfOa6KIWZEZnkBEYm0tD2phO_L6vlaB25-NDJSfRnjLbJhVxMuFPQyFCjGvW0IRVpkgPOnoG3JdR9d-SBfBFKsxahV7mCdfa1BJEFgT89Nhwo-QWTk_5020wJn2NOnptddMDE1g/s320/westminster-choir-2013-02-03+15.01.25.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My view of Westminster Choir Assembling (Jan 2013)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For an instrumentalist to experience music that celebrates both traditions comes from an odd perspective. In the years since I have come to enjoy many choral works -- Carmen, Berlioz </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Te Deum</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, Verdi’s </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Requiem</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (especially Abbado’s </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dies irae</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">), Walton’s </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Belshazzar’s Feast</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, and the readily accessible Borodin </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Polovtsian Dances </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">too infrequently performed with voices. But classical vocal performances represent a relatively small portion of my collection in the genre.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Edward Said's Collaborator </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Carnegie audience was openly affectionate toward <a href="http://www.danielbarenboim.com/" target="_blank">Barenboim</a>. When he reappeared to start the 2nd half of the program, they applauded him at length. Perhaps an indication that he is also a musician’s musician endowed with more than political-cultural sensibilities, at the conclusion of the 2nd, Barenboim selected the French horns to stand up first to acknowledge the adulation. At the end of the 9th there were three (four?) curtain calls. In the last of these, the audience, perhaps hoping for an encore, instead applauded through Barenboim's stroll through the orchestra to shake the hand of every last orchestra member. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Barenboim’s touring days may be numbered. His stage entrances and exits were a bit unsteady; at times, he braced himself against one of the first violinists. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Sound </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Apologies to the audiophile, 3D, surround-sound purists who think otherwise, but there is no possible way to reproduce the sound quality of a full orchestra and 90+ voices in Carnegie Hall – not in a home stereo, and not in a theatre PA. I’m not sure it is possible to list all the reasons why reproductions fail. It’s especially apparent in quiet passages where there’s a lot going on. Perhaps some of it is having the visual cues, such as watching which element Barenboim is electing to emphasize – and especially when it’s a musical element one hadn’t thought important. And it’s a breadth of auditory space for the music to occupy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Not recommended as a means of recreating the experience described here, but NPR has <a href="http://www.npr.org/event/music/170249144/carnegie-hall-live-daniel-barenboim-leads-the-west-eastern-divan-orchestra" target="_blank">archived</a> the WQXR ("Yes, I’m a member") live stream. Catch a couple of the highlights, such as:</span></div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Use of both dynamic and tempo spacing at the end of the 2nd, beginning at 32:30 to the end of this last movement</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The interview with Barenboim, who argues that Beethoven’s 9th “disrupts order” </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a dramatic rescendo at the beginning of the 9th’s first movement, and once the two-note descending theme has been introduced, Barenboim gives it an a tempo, longing a tempo repetition </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At 86:50-87:10 well-executed accents give this 2nd movement of the 9th, one that is sometimes given less careful play, a certain gravity that at points deserves </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At 110:00 ff, the almost inaudible theme, a stroke of directorial genius </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At 120:00-121:40, hear what was missed by not being in Carnegie Hall. The live recording of the combined choir and orchestra simply doesn’t soar as it did in person in CH.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Cliffhanger tempo and diminuendi in minutes 124-125</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Barenboim’s management of swells with this orchestra and choir were accomplished, steady, magnificent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet the woman next to me left 5-10 minutes before the end of the finale. She may have been the only one to choose that time to leave. An enthusiastic 20-something took her place with much foot-tapping and self-absorbed conducting gestures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As is evident from the photo, my vantage point was perfect. With binoculars I was able to read the music off the first violin stands (were the markings in response to Barenboim’s direction, or the violinist’s own?), and to see Barenboim’s subtle gestures – even those moments when he stood motionless and moved the baton ever so slightly as it was pointed toward the floor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I lost a lens out of my Rx glasses, and was later that night threatened with having my 10-trip railroad ticket disallowed because I had trimmed its edges with scissors. Not important. Not after this. Beethoven’s 9th at Carnegie had been something that many a sentient being would have wished to have experienced in my stead. But as the <a href="http://www.carnegiehall.org/Event.aspx?id=10737418538&pn=10737418537" target="_blank">program notes</a> observe, quoting Shaw, that visceral response isn't remarkable or even interesting. We owe it Beethoven and Schiller to go deeper, to tease what I'd casually called the "dimensions" of the piece.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Ode and the Hum</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I had always assumed that it was as if Beethoven dragged an unsuspecting librettist kicking in his mediocrity and introduced him to a new league of play. Or did he? I read more on Schiller’s <a href="http://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_91-96/931_Schiller_Ode.html" target="_blank">Ode</a> to find out. It turns out that the text for “Ode to Joy” was in the German cultural ether long before Beethoven began work on the 9th. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wanted to know if the text was as much an achievement as the music. The respective authors seemed both to have doubted what they had made -- as too private, idiosyncratic or simplistic. They doubted it not in response to public remarks as much as whether the message “every man becomes a brother,” and the idealism of "the good is the beautiful" were laudable, but because in retrospect it seemed unrealistic and unfounded.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To be unpersuaded, that is, to be a non-believer, seemed to be in kinship with Schiller and Beethoven. This seems an irony Shaw might tolerate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What did the choir think through the first three movements? The occasional expressions on musician faces – smiles, frowns. Were they puzzling over the confluence of Schiller and Beethoven, the zeitgeist of . . . what? Thinking of ancestors who may have heard it? Of a suffering that the 9th strives to alleviate?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This I pondered as Barenboim attained a pianissimo to die for in the passage that first introduces the too-famous theme. It seemed to begin as a distant hum from the basses, then a faint tune as if coming from an adjacent building, or perhaps an usher humming to himself off stage. But when it was time for forte, Barenboim didn’t hold back. The preeminent soloists and the Westminster Choir, held in check for all the preceding fury and solace, was fully prepared to ascend the heights and to soar between the waves the master would create.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Which ought to lead one to read more about Barenboim’s political aspirations, and about Edward Said </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">with whom he co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra project </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(a good place to start with Said is the late Christopher Hitchens’ </span><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/obit/2003/09/edward_said.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">Valediction</a>).<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Such study is work. It's work that brings us, perhaps not surprisingly, back to a very verbal -- not at all musical -- “earth,” to Beethoven’s textual inspiration and now to <a href="http://jewishquarterly.org/2010/11/said-barenboim-and-the-west-east-divan-orchestra/" target="_blank">Goethe</a>, whose <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West-%C3%B6stlicher_Diwan" target="_blank">lyrical poem collection</a> inspired Said and Barenboim to name the orchestra after something so intangible as a rarely read, nearly 200 year old poem. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The faint hum that introduced the Ode theme on this cold February afternoon is indeed faint, yet still shows signs of light. But those signs remain as faint as when Schiller and Beethoven created this most glorious of signs.</span></div>
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knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-78345126187012197592012-07-09T00:21:00.002-04:002012-07-09T00:21:29.239-04:00Gordon Ferries - Musician-poet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVG49qau7wIXTvbU2XitnIE7PM_HpgRBM4Hpf1eqcRFfiKE0LLalvtvN3nvuv0Wgjtai7PO91qJQHrAiHNCAAarS-i2OCXpLy5LFyiprMx3s869J-d4ZtU5z-pTt2VJ8Sw-XRSVA/s1600/gordon-ferries-album-la-preciosa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVG49qau7wIXTvbU2XitnIE7PM_HpgRBM4Hpf1eqcRFfiKE0LLalvtvN3nvuv0Wgjtai7PO91qJQHrAiHNCAAarS-i2OCXpLy5LFyiprMx3s869J-d4ZtU5z-pTt2VJ8Sw-XRSVA/s200/gordon-ferries-album-la-preciosa.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://gordonferries.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/hiver_2009_small.jpg?w=430" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://gordonferries.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/hiver_2009_small.jpg?w=430" width="150" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Baroque guitarist Gordon Ferries was given credits on some web sites for work on Ute Lemper's album <i><a href="http://www.utelemper.com/index_2.html">Between Yesterday and Today</a></i>. I couldn't verify this, but I did take note of <a href="http://gordonferries.com/poetry/">poetry</a> he has written.</span>knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-23881730663202948852012-07-08T16:54:00.002-04:002012-07-08T16:58:25.148-04:00Kevin Kline in the Classical Music Rapture Zone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrzEfPsGtRlaDwdL0XhVkOH8jpGfJ8eJPHJuLaKLvjWBfx78ogoQYA-vBNaJpETKgz0efUQ4CAEEXMgVSH8a1T2AskifzAwtTzizoneWRN8CH6MSrpiCbqC8laTRycNML7zwrOhQ/s1600/kevin-kline-sophie-choice.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrzEfPsGtRlaDwdL0XhVkOH8jpGfJ8eJPHJuLaKLvjWBfx78ogoQYA-vBNaJpETKgz0efUQ4CAEEXMgVSH8a1T2AskifzAwtTzizoneWRN8CH6MSrpiCbqC8laTRycNML7zwrOhQ/s1600/kevin-kline-sophie-choice.JPG" /></a></div>
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Kevin Kline and Alan J. Pakula captured something unique about classical music lovers in this scene from <i>Sophie's Choice</i>.knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-90613433816013817512011-03-06T22:16:00.001-05:002011-03-06T22:16:17.390-05:00Muse Research "Ruggedized" VST Device<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFdMA3Pm4bKoDxt2Wvs2C7Y3ScuobaSbZ2jccWBi8goXYN4ceur-qIWV54YGawvFvjrEPb2zFaDCxVuumeirI6zf9G2VNePRgYB1npslZhehc2OP_KHp2v9Ou4sqe8VGRBhUp8Sg/s1600/museresearch-receptor-r2plus_1000a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFdMA3Pm4bKoDxt2Wvs2C7Y3ScuobaSbZ2jccWBi8goXYN4ceur-qIWV54YGawvFvjrEPb2zFaDCxVuumeirI6zf9G2VNePRgYB1npslZhehc2OP_KHp2v9Ou4sqe8VGRBhUp8Sg/s400/museresearch-receptor-r2plus_1000a.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Muse Research 2U device announced in 2010 provides a workable alternative to what, for some, is a sometimes unreliable, cumbersome laptop-based host for virtual instruments. Fast forward to NAMM 2011, and the company has announced the Receptor 2+, featuring more of the same -- but a faster processor, more storage, more RAM. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Having <a href="http://portwashington.patch.com/events/dark-violin-american-songbook-sparks-and-arcs-on-electric-violin">completed a live performance</a> requiring two computers in January myself, it's obvious that conventional workarounds aren't ideal for musicians, stage crew or computers. And what about video?</span></div>knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-4313636618350817822010-08-15T23:44:00.002-04:002014-09-02T22:07:10.261-04:002010 Dodge Poetry Festival Reinstated<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvuO3NHLTvWin3_oSX0v_5mFH7DWbajkdosYsi8XlL6avuPcP6CIMTwjYIMXg_gXwUsWXNIUmJGe_KiesMxs1krDc_bja4oQN3TMKm_Pvacg-57jTdTgJMuIT6ts1PZsyhABFqQ/s1600/dodge-festival.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvuO3NHLTvWin3_oSX0v_5mFH7DWbajkdosYsi8XlL6avuPcP6CIMTwjYIMXg_gXwUsWXNIUmJGe_KiesMxs1krDc_bja4oQN3TMKm_Pvacg-57jTdTgJMuIT6ts1PZsyhABFqQ/s1600/dodge-festival.png" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's old news now, but after <a href="http://www.starwhisperer.com/2009/01/dodge-poetry-festival-for-2010-as-we.html">announcing in 2009</a> that the only national poetry festival would be cancelled, the organizers of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival have found a way to stage a 2010 event. On sale August 16, ticket holders will convene in storied Newark, New Jersey's largest and, some might say, most notorious city. Evening programs will be held at the NJPAC Prudential Hall, which is, as the Foundation writes, "a world-class performance space" very different from the rural/suburban tent venues of years past. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Dodge Poetry Festival is only held every other year, and the </span><a href="http://bit.ly/cPUU6V"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2010 Festival</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> takes place October 7-10.</span><br />
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knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-90655831770067314412009-09-04T16:36:00.007-04:002009-09-04T18:00:42.925-04:00The Pillow-Words of Roger Ebert's Literary Voice<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyTjfaTC0wzYPr1lIIWEYn2_toUHjuDawbtM9IrLs_YH3Ww24RAaAA_UrChnjvAjOLgoPX4Im0bP8k4WOpC0TiJVE5nol6jaWENUGeZpRwtGcH6C1dyab3E_I5Ppw2L-AYfm0rNw/s1600-h/roger-ebert-com-logo.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 283px; height: 114px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyTjfaTC0wzYPr1lIIWEYn2_toUHjuDawbtM9IrLs_YH3Ww24RAaAA_UrChnjvAjOLgoPX4Im0bP8k4WOpC0TiJVE5nol6jaWENUGeZpRwtGcH6C1dyab3E_I5Ppw2L-AYfm0rNw/s320/roger-ebert-com-logo.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377715063363886498" border="0" /></a>Sadly, film critic Roger Ebert is now an off-air personality as are most critics, and even the passable sequel of the much loved <span style="font-style: italic;">Siskel & Ebert</span>, the aspirationally named <span style="font-style: italic;">Ebert & Roeper</span> went off the air in 2008. A new incarnation of the franchise is planned for the fall (<a href="http://bit.ly/SCRDh">featuring</a> A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips) , but Ebert has continued -- perhaps elevated -- the quality of his critical writing during this period. In a profession where the pressure is great for a minimalist binary sound bite -- i.e., a thumbs up or down, or at the least, a hurried Friday or Saturday night filmgoer skim -- Ebert instead follows a high-minded, albeit brisk critical tradition. An excerpt from his recent <a href="http://bit.ly/4xORw">discussion of writer-director Hirokazu Kore-Eda's <span style="font-style: italic;">Still Walking</span> is not atypical</a>. Sometimes his writing rises to the "pillow words" (or <a href="http://bit.ly/1s5EPr">Makurakotoba</a>) standard to which he refers here, and these well articulated affinities draw me closer to him than shared views of this or that film:<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>None of these films elevate the temperature with melodrama. They draw us inward with concern. Kore-Eda is a tender humanist, and that fits well with his elegant visual style. In "Still Walking," he shares something valuable with Ozu: What I call Ozu's "pillow shots," named after the "pillow words" in Japanese poetry, which separate passages with just a word of two, seemingly unconnected, for a pause in the rhythm. These shots may show passing trains (a favorite of both directors), or a detail of architecture or landscape. It isn't their subject that matters, it's their composure.</blockquote><br /></div>knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-12637313747551429722009-05-30T10:23:00.006-04:002009-05-30T10:50:47.596-04:00Smaller Weekend NYT: The Less-Must-Be-More Squeeze<div align="justify"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFm1uUAfRI9nDW4ZYYsJqd2y83I23fO1rSoRtFDsjBIjDiIF1-2HryFxdLSYZxW-oKZZUnId5brguxEKabZlbIBw1iELsVpScYT_dHyG-LKtwendKldd9WRVNKeaC0Kons1zPItw/s1600-h/nyt-sunday-book-review-cover-2.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 109px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5341623768010314546" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFm1uUAfRI9nDW4ZYYsJqd2y83I23fO1rSoRtFDsjBIjDiIF1-2HryFxdLSYZxW-oKZZUnId5brguxEKabZlbIBw1iELsVpScYT_dHyG-LKtwendKldd9WRVNKeaC0Kons1zPItw/s200/nyt-sunday-book-review-cover-2.jpg" /></a> My weekend subscription to the New York Times is an outlier in what is a staid and predictable week by week routine. Mining the weekend Books section for words, phrases and advertisements (and sometimes books) can consume hours, or, as the unread Book Review sections pile up in the attic, hours of longing glances. </div><br /><div align="justify">Today's experience disappointed. At the same time that NYT has raised prices for the weekend edition, the content volume has declined. And yes, the quantity of advertising inserts -- usually so voluminous that it's necessary to open the (unrecycleable?) bag-wrapped newspaper over the recycle bin, typified perhaps by glossy Epson, Canon or Nikon brochures along with color Best Buy and Target promotions --has also decreased.</div><br /><div align="justify">In a certain way of thinking, this fate puts pressure on the remaining content to raise to a higher quality. Call it a less-must-be-more squeeze. This hasn't directly affected the Book Review section, but, perhaps coincidentally, the Book Review section is also weaker today. The advertisements seemed more compelling (see ads for Eva Hoffman's Apassionata, P. Miller's <a href="http://bit.ly/aahw3">Human Landscapes</a>, and, it must be admitted, one most likely to summon a tongue-lashing from Garrison Keeler, an ad for the Sewanee Writers' Conference).</div><br /><div align="justify">The week's most memorable review, by the way, is by <a href="http://bit.ly/DRmsA">Robert Pinsky's take on Elmore Leonard's</a> <strong>Road Dogs</strong>, though it did not tempt me to commit reading the book. Here's my weekend ore:</div><blockquote><p align="justify">Having characters think about fine details of speech before engaging in sex or violence isn't merely a prank or indulgence. In a story about trust and betray, the hper-intense attention to nuances of dialogue not only fits: it's a matter of survival.<br /></p></blockquote>knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-17175739457534744822009-05-10T12:26:00.014-04:002009-05-10T13:23:09.028-04:00The Value of Hurdles: French horn as "Hardest" Instrument<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLZy2NAov07pWqMI_HaayA3eTF0aHvEQHxXqNBnWq9fqgYiR_DwwcV0MwfnKCj3sXTEVyIx9BAynN-pEnFHuNvRskDoDpQ2gDdKT0HxI32Us__pZ-bvxgoGCZjqmLYS1J9t3lMkA/s1600-h/tom-tucker-tucson-early-70s.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 169px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334236982309253922" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLZy2NAov07pWqMI_HaayA3eTF0aHvEQHxXqNBnWq9fqgYiR_DwwcV0MwfnKCj3sXTEVyIx9BAynN-pEnFHuNvRskDoDpQ2gDdKT0HxI32Us__pZ-bvxgoGCZjqmLYS1J9t3lMkA/s320/tom-tucker-tucson-early-70s.jpg" /></a> This post is for Tom Tucker. Tom was a high school cohort and friend (cousin of my sweetheart at the time, but that post would be much harder to write), and excellent French horn player. The high school orchestra that was definitely a cut above the rest. We tackled difficult pieces (I'll never forget sight reading the first violin part for Brahms' <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Festival_Overture">Academic Festival Overture</a>). In retrospect, such challenges and the exhilaration of feeling we occasionally glimpsed the greatness of the masters, were the highlight of those troubled years.<br /><br /><object width="350" height="36"><param name="movie" value="http://studio360.org/flashplayer/mp3player.swf?config=http://studio360.org/flashplayer/config_share.xml&file=http://studio360.org/stream/xspf/131368"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /><br /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://studio360.org/flashplayer/mp3player.swf?config=http://studio360.org/flashplayer/config_share.xml&file=http://studio360.org/stream/xspf/131368" id="STUDIO360_Mp3_Player_131368" name="STUDIO360_Mp3_Player_131368" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" wmode="transparent" height="36" width="350"></embed></object><br /><br /><div>On Kurt Ande<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRRmqfNx-r13zv9UGXAhCOXQ2TULrHYuQsk6FAGfTcKlemUij610IT1sVMRXsEmUFa3Td1BFiQR_9kCbC3QvAdXvcBOXcczQi_KHuIFm4CT1Gi86R-J66DnjA-80CS8PZboUQosg/s1600-h/french-horn.png"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 142px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334243259013001858" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRRmqfNx-r13zv9UGXAhCOXQ2TULrHYuQsk6FAGfTcKlemUij610IT1sVMRXsEmUFa3Td1BFiQR_9kCbC3QvAdXvcBOXcczQi_KHuIFm4CT1Gi86R-J66DnjA-80CS8PZboUQosg/s200/french-horn.png" /></a>rson's Studio 360 this week, WNYC <a href="http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2009/01/23">returned</a> to the subject of Jasper Rees' <u><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061626619/studi360-20">A Devil to Play: One Man's Year-Long Quest to Master the Orchestra's Most Difficult Instrument</a></u>. In finding one's way through the perils of competence-seeking, those of us with modest plodding talent needed help -- unique ways of seeing the challenges. One method entails ordering instruments from the most to the least difficult. At the time, I was certain that violin was at the top of that list. Just look at this Paganini piece, I'd say. There was animated argument over this; the orchestra's oboeist Larry made a convincing case for that instrument. </div><br /><div></div><div>Years later when I confidently suggested trumpet to my youngest son, I learned the hard way -- accompanying him to every lesson -- that trumpet was "up there" somewhere, despite our first trumpet Dean Wallraff's making it look easy years before, when he played the solo trumpet parts from Bizet's L'Arlésienne suite. I thought clarinet to be easier at the time, but <a href="http://tucsonsymphony.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=32">John Snavely</a> would be the first to say otherwise. </div><br /><div></div><div>Even host Kurt Anderson reported trying to switch to French horn from trumpet and finding that difficult, a transition that Rees confirms both in the interview and book.</div><br /><div></div><div>Tom went on to considerable success playing in top ensembles in Los Angeles and elsewhere before moving east. When I saw him last year, he rued the fact that he had not been mentored, or had not been lucky enough, to break through to the very top (i.e., the L.A. Phil). I was sympathetic, but, in truth, much more interested in what it was like to play in the brass section for the beginning of Janacek's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinfonietta_(Jan%C3%A1%C4%8Dek)">Sinfonietta</a>. I am probably one of a few people on the planet who has attempted to use a snip of the introduction as a ring tone. Which was my way of saying that I had become disenchanted with the notion of overcoming instrument difficulty as a measure of success. Even a mediocre composer can make any instrument into a monster of unplayability through tempo, register switches, range, selection of key.</div><div></div><br /><div>Rees' treatise on this subject, which rightly should merit only a short essay in the New Yorker rather than than a book length project, is a reminder that Tom's (pictured here in the early 70's) achievements are not to be so easily overlooked.</div><div></div>knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-44220537882334997722009-04-05T21:20:00.009-04:002014-09-02T22:52:51.863-04:00Last composed melody in our time? Korngold's "Glück, das mir verblieb"<br />
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WNYC aired an episode of NPR's "Mad About Music," featuring selections made by Ioan Holender, current director of the Vienna State Opera. One of his selections is also one of my favorites. I first heard it on the defunct British magazine-CD periodical, <em>Classic CD</em>, which introduced me to many works I would never have otherwise heard.</div>
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Wolfgang Korngold Die tote Stadt “Glück, das mir verblieb”. English Chamber Orchestra. Jeffrey Tate. Renée Fleming (Marietta). Decca B0001024-02. </div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/89/Marcel_Prawy_Gl%C3%BCck%2C_das_mir_verblieb.jpg/250px-Marcel_Prawy_Gl%C3%BCck%2C_das_mir_verblieb.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/89/Marcel_Prawy_Gl%C3%BCck%2C_das_mir_verblieb.jpg/250px-Marcel_Prawy_Gl%C3%BCck%2C_das_mir_verblieb.jpg" height="200" style="float: right; height: 324px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 250px;" width="154" /></a>Ioan Holender quotes musicologist Marcel Prawy as having said, “’Glück, das mir verblieb’ from <em>Die tote Stadt</em> is the last composed melody in our time.”</div>
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Gilbert Kaplan is the amateur conductor / Mahler specialist who has been the recipient of some complaints from perfectionists among the professionals he has conducted. In this episode of <em>Mad About Music</em>, Holender selects the Mahler Symphony No. 5 “Adagietto”, and we hear an excerpt of Kaplan's competent-enough version (London Symphony Orchestra. Gilbert Kaplan. Pickwick GKS 1001).<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Kaplan"></a></div>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Kaplan"></a>knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-21343765582319981962009-03-31T23:02:00.005-04:002014-09-02T22:36:58.864-04:00Mediocre Violinists' Lament<br />
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<a href="http://blogs.wnyc.org/eveningmusic/terrance-mcknight/">Terrance McNight of WNYC</a> asked about the difficulty of the Tchaikovsky Vln concerto, a piece Terrance reckoned to be a bit outside his typical <span style="font-style: italic;">Evening Music</span> repertoire. (Ah, but it’s all about juxtaposition in the program, which tonight Terrance had just right). Apart from the unmusical cadenzas, I love the piece. Tchaikovsky’s incredible gift for melody is on display right from the start. But as a young violinist, when I first saw the sheet music it pretty much confirmed an opinion that was already taking shape — and 40 years later, I still hold that belief. Namely, that, unlike the piano repertoire, which has very good music written for mid-level competencies, the best violin music is difficult and beyond what most players can aspire to. Count among these concerti the Brahms, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Bartok, or even the Barber (last movement <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQroKkaBBmc" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQroKkaBBmc</a>). Sadly, it’s an instrument of considerable difficulty for which the payoff seems in perpetual moto [sic] / out of reach — save for the most gifted among us. Complaining aside, take that as a challenge to composers everywhere.<br />
Speaking of which, I was reminded, on listening to the aforementioned Ann Akiko Meyers' performance of the Barber Violin Concerto <span style="font-style: italic;">Presto in moto</span>, how a small but perfect execution of technique can make all the difference. Her bowing technique is perfect at 1:38 min into the performance, pulling a timbral lever that couldn't be better performed by an audio technician or a rack of effects pedals.<br />
<br />knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-19640308853666229472009-02-03T18:26:00.013-05:002014-09-02T22:40:17.865-04:00Portrait of the Artists' Inner Circle<br />
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Valerie Martin's short story collection, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories</span> (Vintage, 2006) reflects the sure hand at narration and psychological insight revealed in her earlier works <span style="font-style: italic;">A Recent Martyr</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Mary Reilly</span>.<br />
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One might quibble with the focal characters-- selected from the artistic elites (honored but marginalized, depending upon your point of view). Writers may perhaps be forgiven for dallying in the subcommunities that most fascinate them, but authors of literary fiction are scrutinized even more savagely for this defect. But, as if to blunt this criticism, Martin's elites are foils for artists' inner circle of friends, lovers, acquaintances, teachers. Martin avoids several all too common pitfalls: absurd "arteest" idiosyncracies, sycophantic reverence for the creative process regardless of the interpersonal havoc it wreaks, but mostly, unsympathetically flat depictions of an underserved supporting cast.<br />
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Consider this brief excerpt from the opening story, "His Blue Period." Martin's craft interweaves the ordinary and a modestly elevated literacy.<br />
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I spent the rest of the morning trying to paint, but I got nowhere. I could see the painting of Maria's hands clutching the edge of a chute, and behind her, that ominous blue, Anspach's blue period, waiting to swallow her up forever. In the afternoon I picked up my daughter, Bridget, from her school, and we spent an hour at the corner library. When we got back home, Yvonne was there, standing at the kitchen counter, chopping something. Was she still mad at me from the morning? I went up beside her on the pretense of washing my hands. "Day okay?" I said.</blockquote>
Nor is Martin fearful of giving her characters a philosophical voice wedged between ordinary dialog. In "The Open Book" Edith says,<br />
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It all felt dismally familiar. They were at the middle point of an argument they had been through a thousand times: reason versus passion, vitality versus stability. Sometimes, when Isabel was so frustrated and stymied by her career that she became depressed and Edith had to buck her up, they had even switched sides. But this time a resolution of those irreconcilable differences would have to be found, for it was not just philosophies that were at odds but material possibilities.</blockquote>
I found myself in a pleasantly distracting daze contemplating each of these stories taking flight as finished novels, had Martin chosen the loftier form. She has some brutal plot twists in store here, but to those of us who have read Valerie Martin before, it's as the narrator in "The Unfinished Novel" says: "I was fixed between curiosity and foreboding, and stymied by the unsettling feeling of having done this before."knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-63318380705093335102009-01-15T23:46:00.010-05:002009-01-15T23:56:36.232-05:00TARP $$$ to Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation?<a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3092/3200941214_48abdc0fa3_m.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3092/3200941214_48abdc0fa3_m.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Start a rumor. That after Obama takes the oath, his first act will be to provide additional funding to the Dodge Foundation so that the 2010 Poetry Festival can be staged after all? Else Robert Hass, Maxine Kumin, Ted Kooser, Charles Simic and Billy Collins will be left to wander from shopping mall to shopping mall in desperate search of a respectable poetry audience.</div><div></div><div></div><div>There would be transparency. Probably too much of the stuff, given the suspicious nature of serious writing.</div><div><blockquote><p><em>What is it then between us?<br />What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?<br /><br />Whatever it is, it avails not -- distance avails not, and place avails not,<br />I too lived . . .</em> </p><p>-- Walt Whitman, quoted on the 12 Biennual Festival program cover.<br /></p></blockquote></div>knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-49053855347887156712009-01-14T17:43:00.005-05:002009-01-14T17:52:07.691-05:00Dodge Poetry Festival for 2010 (as we know it) Cancelled<a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/117/306062108_7ce0458557_m.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 142px" alt="" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/117/306062108_7ce0458557_m.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>I just received an email from David Grant, President of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Foundation. Grant reports that the Foundation has sustained a 30% decline in financial assets, and ". . . we will not be able to produce a Poetry Festival in September 2010 on the scale of past Festivals."</div><br /><div></div><div>Sad, but no surprise.</div><br /><div></div><div>Grant (possessing, it must be observed, the perfect surname for this position at the Foundation) goes on to say:</div><div></div><br /><div>"we may need to “reinvent” the Festival on either a more affordable scale or in a more affordable venue. (Unfortunately, over the last three Festivals, the production costs have more than doubled, and a mere 20% of the Festival budget went toward hiring the poets at the very center of the event.) </div>knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-62964180115892961382009-01-08T14:33:00.004-05:002014-09-02T22:56:30.120-04:00Needed: A Good Poem About Warping Darwinian Time<br />
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February 12 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. A question still bedeviling natural selection is this: how fast does it happen? In this <a href="http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/55312/">The Scientist article</a> by Andrea Gawrylewski, scientists embrace the metaphors of hammer and microscope to help explain how an organism's complexity might or might not affect the rate of evolution. I feel certain a good poet could have produced better analogies, but would have been challenged to overcome some hair-raising [sic] metonymy involving laboratory mice.knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-47359236732153578422009-01-02T22:53:00.004-05:002014-09-02T22:16:38.811-04:00Don't call him a Renaissance Man!<br />
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<a href="http://us.penguingroup.com/static/covers/all/8/2/9781594488528L.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://us.penguingroup.com/static/covers/all/8/2/9781594488528L.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a>S. Johnson has written an apparently free-wheeling connectionist [sic] bio of Joseph Priestley, reviewed <a href="http://tinyurl.com/8l5329">here</a> by NYT, and provided an excellent opening for the return of <a href="http://sciencefriday.com/">Science Friday</a> to WNYC. Interviewed by Ira this afternoon, Johnson insisted that Priestley was not a renaissance man. So what does that make the rest of us chumps? <br />
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<br />knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-2168015017589565812009-01-02T22:27:00.003-05:002014-09-02T22:55:05.879-04:00Poetry in 2009? The outrage.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6utPbra8NMiWZKIPvOWXMIw1k1shyyb11iFAMGDQ5jUx7UcMrhlABnGGO5OHw_tUi1Ez0mQFTkJXeIguRXmvQkSsBlfIIhhuksDfhFLBQyWq8q1D6EHHZkADSUEFwFgYArY5zRA/s1600/bill-moyers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6utPbra8NMiWZKIPvOWXMIw1k1shyyb11iFAMGDQ5jUx7UcMrhlABnGGO5OHw_tUi1Ez0mQFTkJXeIguRXmvQkSsBlfIIhhuksDfhFLBQyWq8q1D6EHHZkADSUEFwFgYArY5zRA/s1600/bill-moyers.jpg" /></a></div>
Tonight <a href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2009/01/the_enduring_power_of_poetry.html">Bill Moyers</a> and the son of John Lithgow's parents offered up the preposterous notion that poetry will matter in 2009. Mmm. That's entertainment.knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-75093969791031759662008-12-07T10:58:00.003-05:002014-09-02T22:13:05.792-04:00Snow Show<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JVBRbIobQEL8aXeCeTvWYLNMCTZX6YLtsdri1scNWamKdi0w6XFBmeXBd_ABtiLBaBSzAXrb_Ch3-2HtWTApqTstfe2w2RASZWn9lv6TDQ4m337hMR1GCLWhykXsh9UpbWdtfQ/s1600/paul-zelinsky-on-snow-for-kids.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JVBRbIobQEL8aXeCeTvWYLNMCTZX6YLtsdri1scNWamKdi0w6XFBmeXBd_ABtiLBaBSzAXrb_Ch3-2HtWTApqTstfe2w2RASZWn9lv6TDQ4m337hMR1GCLWhykXsh9UpbWdtfQ/s1600/paul-zelinsky-on-snow-for-kids.png" height="452" width="640" /></a></div>
Paul Zelinsky's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/books/review/Zelinsky-t.html">NYTBR review</a> of two children's books on snow ends with a witticism that had my ears perked up as the night ended with the first snowfall of the season here in Metro NYC.knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-88234873182756545922007-11-03T14:52:00.000-04:002014-09-02T22:09:49.853-04:00Gene Siskel was right<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBVll4STZ-qZvPr4SZoaT1216fvrozW_KG3WQquo0hyphenhyphenZh4D3dWnJcVTtFspzntZyCoDG2DdV0_zbm4dfeUYF420wx0ti8wVhb_ofTUamEqHm5HhQE-MKV4JdpAOlKBRyZ0icGVqQ/s1600/gene-siskel-via-wik-pedia-4799_117773958725.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBVll4STZ-qZvPr4SZoaT1216fvrozW_KG3WQquo0hyphenhyphenZh4D3dWnJcVTtFspzntZyCoDG2DdV0_zbm4dfeUYF420wx0ti8wVhb_ofTUamEqHm5HhQE-MKV4JdpAOlKBRyZ0icGVqQ/s1600/gene-siskel-via-wik-pedia-4799_117773958725.jpg" height="200" width="152" /></a></div>
Only a few months before an untimely death from a brain tumor, Gene Siskel reviewed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege">The Siege</a>. This 1998 film directed Edward Zwick starred Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, Bruce Willis and Tony Shalhoub. You can watch Siskel's review again on the Ebert and Roeper site archive. Considering that it was written and edited before 9/11, the film effectively deals with the difficult decisions that would have to be made when seeking ways to protect the U.S. from terrorists. In their paradigmatic debate at the end of their short analysis, Ebert objects to the characterization of all Arab Americans as the threat, whereas Siskel is more focused on the broader issues. If political leaders had taken this film and the issues it raised more seriously, who knows what "dot-connecting" might have happened, and how many lives in Iraq would have been saved. The Wikipedia entry considers other prescient aspects of the screenplay, written by Lawrence Wright, who several years after 9/11, wrote the book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Looming_Tower">The Looming Tower</a>, which retraced the failure of the FBI and CIA to cooperate during the runup to 9/11. Wikipedia quotes Wright in 2007 as saying that this film was the most rented film immediately after 9/11.knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-4029201583095811272007-04-21T14:02:00.000-04:002007-04-21T14:13:07.442-04:00When the words get in the way<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDrk6aixWWkm8UZW1k1jmjqF-9mi2Lzk4ExeN7ctMMqcxD0Y-uVJiZYbLPzaotiUrY3TxLcGsSFLzp9bqqWTCdo9pE22T3fLo3DSPGE4RV4vGVvCQjua5T2783z2lzH1xxBrYfA/s1600-h/derek-walcott-selected-poems.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDrk6aixWWkm8UZW1k1jmjqF-9mi2Lzk4ExeN7ctMMqcxD0Y-uVJiZYbLPzaotiUrY3TxLcGsSFLzp9bqqWTCdo9pE22T3fLo3DSPGE4RV4vGVvCQjua5T2783z2lzH1xxBrYfA/s200/derek-walcott-selected-poems.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5055944528439657090" border="0" /></a>This expression seems to have captivated the lyric writing of many a 19-year-old pop writer. Yet when William Logan (an accomplished poet himself) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Logan.t.html">takes on</a> Derek Walcott's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Selected Poems</span>, the complaint seems no more persuasive than in dashed-off doggerel:<br /><blockquote>The colonized, decolonized islands, victims of what Walcott calls “the leprosy of empire,” have been taken up by scholars in subaltern studies, postcolonial studies and studies whose very names are subject to rancorous argument. The poet too often borrows the academic’s gassy editorials (“the politicians plod / without imagination”) and self-service sentiments (“poetry is still treason / because it is truth”). If he had not invented himself, academia would have had to invent him. In condensed form, Walcott believes that the British Empire was bad, except where it was good, and English literature good, except where it was bad. His islands are ravishing but painterly, observed with a detachment that leaves him more a tourist than a fortunate traveler, not a man who got away but one who was never quite there.</blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>Many critics see Walcott’s major achievement as “Omeros” (1990), a version of the Homeric epics translated to the Caribbean, the Trojan War reimagined as a struggle between two fishermen, Achille and Hector, over a woman named Helen. Despite imperious passages of broken terza rima, this epic of nearly 8,000 lines is spoiled by its clumsy narration (Walcott can never tell a story without losing his way in lovely detail), the black characters bloated with the poet’s ambition, the white no more than ludicrous caricatures. Whether describing a man’s scar “puckered like the corolla / of a sea-urchin” or an egret that “stabs and stabs the mud with one lifting foot,” Walcott never met a metaphor he didn’t like — or, indeed, that a reader wouldn’t love. But a tale can’t eat only rubies.<br /></blockquote>Ah, the faint praise of "lovely detail."<br /><br />Though it must be doubted that in today's sensibility, anything comprised of 8000 lines simply is not verse because it violates basic contemporary stylistic canon.knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10843530.post-19701728211427268382007-04-21T13:42:00.000-04:002007-04-21T13:53:07.197-04:00Work speaking for itself. Sometimes.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc1aKy7q7ihaDWfnwthIYK8SQ7lBVuEmcxPXS37Q-JDtKKf7116y9_sXl0eQEb9yQdiWyMcC7RAv28cEK-FLjBdHGVgtS0yMf_p7fjrC5OyB1N2ZF8XJ9kv93ecEv2M7HYUa5vWA/s1600-h/notebooks-robert-frost-robert-faggen.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc1aKy7q7ihaDWfnwthIYK8SQ7lBVuEmcxPXS37Q-JDtKKf7116y9_sXl0eQEb9yQdiWyMcC7RAv28cEK-FLjBdHGVgtS0yMf_p7fjrC5OyB1N2ZF8XJ9kv93ecEv2M7HYUa5vWA/s200/notebooks-robert-frost-robert-faggen.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5055940624314384978" border="0" /></a>David Orr's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/books/review/Orr2.t.html?ex=1177300800&en=35ef9c8d6a0a3fa9&ei=5070">commentary</a> on Robert Faggen's collection of Frost's notebooks includes many references to ongoing disagreements about what is good in American poetry. Critics and poets have both questioned the accessibility of Frost's works ("Stuff I can understand"), but, as Orr points out, but prose notations in the notebooks suggest<br /><blockquote>his aesthetic is evasive, arguable manipulative, and has at its core a freezing indifference that would make the neighborhood barbeque awfully uncomfortable.</blockquote>knowlengrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01857586646777639084noreply@blogger.com0