Sunday, January 24, 2010
Ballet
Dance audition tonight. Someone should talk some sense into me and make me stay home.....I'm too old and too fat to be doing this anymore! Probably won't get cast, though, cause this is an American company and I'm probably too tall for the costumes.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Haiti benefit
We're going to the National Symphony's Haiti Earthquake Relief Benefit Concert tonight, featuring Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Wedding singer
This is the dog that "accompanied" me from under the piano at the wedding I played Saturday.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Xmas in New York
Last weekend I went to New York for a Christmas shopping and musical weekend with Ian as well as to escape the "blizzard" that was forecast for Washington that Saturday (as it turned out, D.C. got about 20-24" of snow and, predictably, the whole city shut down, including all buses and above-ground Metro trains, and even on Monday, the federal government closed all offices because of snow). It was a fun weekend, even considering the 8-10" of snow that made its way to New York City on Saturday night (the original forecast had the snow curving out to sea and missing New York).
Snow or not, New York is always fun in December. Here are a few shots around town during the snow storm.
This is Macy's on Herald Square, with the Empire State Building in the background. We shopped in Macy's for a while, and it was a good thing, since the next day, they had an escalator fire and had to close down the building for a while (and I bet a lot of the clothes and things smelled smoky after that, too!).
It was snowing to hard to get a good picture of the tree, but this is Rockefeller Center. We didn't stay out too long. The horizontal snow was starting to hurt our faces due to the already-fast winds being accellerated in the wind tunnels of downtown skyscrapers.
Here are some chestnuts roasting on an open fire at one of the street vendor carts.
Snow or not, New York is always fun in December. Here are a few shots around town during the snow storm.
This is Macy's on Herald Square, with the Empire State Building in the background. We shopped in Macy's for a while, and it was a good thing, since the next day, they had an escalator fire and had to close down the building for a while (and I bet a lot of the clothes and things smelled smoky after that, too!).
It was snowing to hard to get a good picture of the tree, but this is Rockefeller Center. We didn't stay out too long. The horizontal snow was starting to hurt our faces due to the already-fast winds being accellerated in the wind tunnels of downtown skyscrapers.
Here are some chestnuts roasting on an open fire at one of the street vendor carts.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Memorial Day weekend
Saturday afternoon and evening, we went up to the Delaware pow-wow. They had a good dance with a lot of dancers and a lot of drums. I counted five drums in the center, and another three Northern drums were on the side of the arena in front of our chairs, and two more drums were on the side on the other side of the speaker's stand. We stayed til midnight.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
To boldly go
Well, I saw Star Trek today. It was a late afternoon matinee and I think there were only about half a dozen people in the theater. Good movie. Lots of action, and lots of camera shaking to make it seem like there was even more action going on. I particularly liked the performances of the new Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban). And, what's the deal with Mr. Chekov being seventeen-years-old? I won't talk about the rest of the movie cause I don't want to spoil things for those of you who've not yet seen it.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Musical Modernism
It's Contemporary Music Week at the Kennedy Center right now, so we're getting ten days of modern music from ensembles of all sizes. Last night, Kevin and I went to hear the National Symphony Orchestra play four mostly 21st century works under the direction of contemporary composer/conductor Oliver Knussen.
The evening opened with Julian Anderson's Imagin'd Corners, a twelve-minute tone poem inspired by visions of the Last Judgment and Resurrection of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. The composer makes use of a wide variety of novelty percussion instruments while exploring the abilities of the brass section. A quartet of horns played from the lobby at the back of the hall giving us an antiphonal effect of brass against orchestra (we just heard the brass from our seats on row E down front; I don't know how the effect worked for people in the various balconies of the concert hall). Anderson's writing demanded a lot of "playing between the cracks" for the brass players, so much so that the conductor explained between the first and second works that the horns weren't playing "wrong notes," but they were supposed to sound that way.
During the interlude, Maestro Knussen also explained some of his rationale in selecting the music for the evening's performance, calling the program "incestuous"—it included pieces by him, his teacher, his student, and his friend. Knussen is a large, heavy man with unkempt brown hair who chose to wear one of those black Maoist-style formal jackets that are so popular with European conductors.
Violinist Leila Josefowicz joined the orchestra for the second work, Knussen's Violin Concerto, Op. 30. Written as three interconnected movements, the beginning and ending passages were the same, representing, Knussen said, two pillars, allowing the violin to be suspended on a high wire between them. I found the concerto to be very accessible and almost melodic in the neo-Romantic style.
Miss Josefowicz was a fascinating soloist with an extremely expressive and emotive face throughout the concerto. A pretty young woman, she wore her long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and fastened with a jeweled barrette. Her dress was a striking blue ensemble with a pale sky blue top over a deep turquoise, form-fitted skirt. Sky blue fabric draped from the back of each shoulder to below the knees waived in the air like long wings with every movement of her athletic performance.
After intermission, composer Augusta Read Thomas came out to talk about her work and to offer her thanks to her teacher Knussen for programming her Helios Choros I, which she said was part of a larger ballet. She wore a gold cocktail dress with a beaded bottom that was above-the-knee in the middle and mid-calf on the sides. Much the same as Anderson's work, this piece made extensive use of percussion instruments. It ended rather abruptly and without resolution, but that may be resolved with performance of the entire ballet.
The final work of the evening was the older piece of the day, a 1993 composition and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize winner by Gunther Schuller called Of Reminiscences and Reflections. The music was very beautiful and grand, yet still distinctly modern.
It is always difficult to write about modern music, since most readers have never heard—or heard of—the works and thus have no frame of reference for comparison. I will have to say that this was a very enjoyable musical evening (sometimes contemporary music can be quite painful), and Knussen did a fine job of selecting four pieces that were challenging yet eminently listenable.
I also have to assume that the National Symphony played well; with all the atonality of contemporary music, I sometime have to wonder why they bother to tune.
The evening opened with Julian Anderson's Imagin'd Corners, a twelve-minute tone poem inspired by visions of the Last Judgment and Resurrection of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. The composer makes use of a wide variety of novelty percussion instruments while exploring the abilities of the brass section. A quartet of horns played from the lobby at the back of the hall giving us an antiphonal effect of brass against orchestra (we just heard the brass from our seats on row E down front; I don't know how the effect worked for people in the various balconies of the concert hall). Anderson's writing demanded a lot of "playing between the cracks" for the brass players, so much so that the conductor explained between the first and second works that the horns weren't playing "wrong notes," but they were supposed to sound that way.
During the interlude, Maestro Knussen also explained some of his rationale in selecting the music for the evening's performance, calling the program "incestuous"—it included pieces by him, his teacher, his student, and his friend. Knussen is a large, heavy man with unkempt brown hair who chose to wear one of those black Maoist-style formal jackets that are so popular with European conductors.
Violinist Leila Josefowicz joined the orchestra for the second work, Knussen's Violin Concerto, Op. 30. Written as three interconnected movements, the beginning and ending passages were the same, representing, Knussen said, two pillars, allowing the violin to be suspended on a high wire between them. I found the concerto to be very accessible and almost melodic in the neo-Romantic style.
Miss Josefowicz was a fascinating soloist with an extremely expressive and emotive face throughout the concerto. A pretty young woman, she wore her long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and fastened with a jeweled barrette. Her dress was a striking blue ensemble with a pale sky blue top over a deep turquoise, form-fitted skirt. Sky blue fabric draped from the back of each shoulder to below the knees waived in the air like long wings with every movement of her athletic performance.
After intermission, composer Augusta Read Thomas came out to talk about her work and to offer her thanks to her teacher Knussen for programming her Helios Choros I, which she said was part of a larger ballet. She wore a gold cocktail dress with a beaded bottom that was above-the-knee in the middle and mid-calf on the sides. Much the same as Anderson's work, this piece made extensive use of percussion instruments. It ended rather abruptly and without resolution, but that may be resolved with performance of the entire ballet.
The final work of the evening was the older piece of the day, a 1993 composition and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize winner by Gunther Schuller called Of Reminiscences and Reflections. The music was very beautiful and grand, yet still distinctly modern.
It is always difficult to write about modern music, since most readers have never heard—or heard of—the works and thus have no frame of reference for comparison. I will have to say that this was a very enjoyable musical evening (sometimes contemporary music can be quite painful), and Knussen did a fine job of selecting four pieces that were challenging yet eminently listenable.
I also have to assume that the National Symphony played well; with all the atonality of contemporary music, I sometime have to wonder why they bother to tune.
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