Reggie & music

Reggie, Carolin's-chosen Maine Coon cat often sleeps during the day in a 3-storey carpeted cat-tower behind me as I type at my computer keyboard. A few minutes ago he was listening intently (with his eyes closed) to Dimitri Klebanov's viola concerto (ca. 1990) played by Mela Tenenbaum & the Philharmonia Virtuosi under Richard Kapp (Ess.a.y CD 1052, 1997 ) coming from the old Criterion W4 speakers nearest him.

Conlon Nancarrow?

An Abraham Lincoln brigader who subsequently chose Mexico over anti-Communist USA, Nancarrow (27 OCT 12 – 10 AUG 97) was a thoroughly experimental composer. (from Wikipedia) The complete contents of his studio, including his player piano rolls, instruments, libraries, documents & other objects are now in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. Germans Jurgen Hocker & Wolfgang Heisig are the current live-performers of Nancarrow's player-rolls using similar acoustical instruments. Other performers of his works (often in arrangement for live musicians) include Thomas Ades, Alarm Will Sound & Netherlands ensemble Calefax who also recorded his Studies for player piano, already named 'Best CD of 2009' by Dutch newspaper Het Parool.

Seeking, but not asking,

It’s a typically cloudless sunny Sunday morning, here at the bottom of San Francisco Bay. I’ve just had strips of burnt wheat toast dipped in yogurt with dill-seeds & pre-cooked rice (having finally run out of margarine.)

As I type this, I’m listening to Peter Benoit’s massive “Hoogmis” (21 JUL 1861; Pt. 2 of his ‘Religious Tetrology); with the BRTN Phil. Orch, & Phil. Choir, Brussels, under Alexander Rahbari, (Discover DICD 920178)

Currently I’m reading Jane Redmont’s WHEN IN DOUBT, SING Prayer in Daily Life (paperback edition, 2008; Sorin Books, Notre Dame IN www.sorinbooks.com) loaned to me by her cousin Nancy (Rothenberg) Tepperman who sings in the alto section of the San Jose Peace Chorale, sitting directly in front of me in the bass section.

Until today, I've been trying to ignore Jane’s autobiographical chapters’ insistence on the social context of prayer. I long ago (ca. 1962) abandoned it with Roman Catholicism, & did & do not want to reacquire it now that I’ve long been an Episcopalian with Carolin Combs, who’s now dead these past 2 years, & I’ve returned to the radical loneliness of my solitary late-teens.

But a paragraph of Jane’s (p.17, par 1) stopped me a few minutes ago & I began to think of writing about thoughts that ensued. It was: “Our context is not just our social world. We pray also as inhabitants of planet Earth and participants in nature. The mountain ranges, the corn, the grass pushing up between the cracks of an urban sidewalk – they are part of our community.” (attributed to Elena Stone.)

This thought isn’t exceptional, but it forces me to see myself as somehow praying as I ride one of my ’70s Shogun 10-speeds here in flat urban Santa Clara. Praying is something I’d long studiously avoided. For me it had always been intentional, if not petitional. Seeking, but not asking, not receiving. Until Carolin died (26 JAN 07); since then I’ve frequently asked my Guardian Angel for help. Any help. I assume I’m getting it, somehow, whether I can recognize it or not. I do need that help.

Ades, happening

Last (Fri.) nite (03 APR 09) at the S.F. Symphony, I heard Thomas Ades' [so far, 1st] Violin Concerto "Concentric Paths" (played by Leila Josefowitz); at the donors' reception after, I suggested to him he ought to write 2 more, claiming all 3 need to be heard together to be understood. "Musicologists thrive on this", I told him; it's been done+ before: by Vivaldi in his Op. 8, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (contest between harmony & invention, 1725); its 1st 4 of 12 are Le quattro stagioni (4 seasons); but violin concerti have come a long way since 1725. Maybe all 3 could be played together? I mused; maybe even by 3 violinists? Promoters thrive on such bravura; meanwhile, all-Ades festivals are already happening (2007: London, Paris, Helsinki...) PS: Ades' fave USA composers are Ives & Nancarrow.

What U drive

In the ‘50s, I puzzled over
Canadian Mercurys as Meteors.
Since 1984, NUMMI,
New United Motor Mfg. Inc.,
has built Pontiacs & Toyotas
in a GM plant in Fremont CA,

so what you drive may not
be what you think: soon

small Chryslers may be Fiats.

(31 MAR 09, Santa Clara CA)v12

SF Bay: CoG?

As the daily SF CHRONICLE (called The Chron, here), currently owned by Hearst Corp., is currently halving staff & may well disappear; back East in NYC, the NYT claims it's because "SF Bay has no real center of gravity." Actually, SF Bay has multiple centers of (media) gravity, which may prove 2B the wave of the future. e.g.:

Aristide Maupin, once a Chron columnist, became a bestselling gay novelist, TV-script-writer etc., & is now its emeritus gay media-star; murdered gay supervisor Harvey Milk is back (as portrayed by Sean Penn), thanks to Hollywood. Super-photogenic mayor Gavin Newsom is making (inter)national news (cf. gay marriages, etc.) To the major media, SF is America's gay-capital.

Last nite I was watching Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness" (on DVD) realizing it all took place in SF & I knew every landmark in it, proving even I've become visually familiar with SF in only a few years (thanks to my indulgent friends, the National Writers' Union, & having interviewed for PR-jobs in downtown), while living 50 miles south at the bottom of SF Bay in Silicon Valley, whose 'capital' is San Jose, daily is The San Jose Mercury-News, once the premier Knight-Ridder paper, but now a McClatchy. Across in the East Bay, the Media News Group-owned Oakland TRIB, & McClatchy-owned Sacramento BEE papers are micro-regional.

Meanwhile, the NYT & WSJ sell down here at the bottom of the Bay because many people (like me) are East Coast transplants, so the NYT connects many with where they grew up or were schooled, etc. (Not me; tho a Boston-area resident until 62, I read the Guardian Unlimited on-line; I began reading it in hardcopy while living most of 1985 in Scotland with Carolin Combs.)

[aside] Back-East, Boston is notably ethnic (Irish) & architecturally historic (Revolutionary-era); the liberal daily Boston GLOBE (partially owned by the NYT) is losing millions a month, while its competitor, the rightwing daily Boston HERALD (a fat tabloid) ex-Hearst, now independent, also owns many of the region's weeklies; in my mid-20s, I began there; decades later, before Harte-Hanks pulled out of the region, I wrote for a suburban daily & a suburban weekly. In the nearest major city, 40 miles due west, the Worcester TELEGRAM is also partially owned by the NYT; 50 miles due south, the independent Providence JOURNAL serves RI; slightly southwest, the independent Hartford COURANT serves CT, but the NYT has local editions (pages) for both, so someday it all may end up totally NYT-ish.

Meanwhile, small-tab newspapers can, will & do supply micro-local news to every town, no matter how small. But What's news reportage (vs opinion), Who gets paid to write any of it, & Who reads it, & Why? I've done both, on both coasts, & am doing it now, on-line, as you read this. Soon after I arrived here in SF Bay, I wrote for the on-line reincarnation of the once-subfamous SFCall (www.sfcall.com) that Mark Twain wrote for; now even that on-line Call is defunct.

veggie ombudsman

G.H.W. Bush disliked broccoli;
Obama dislikes beets. I like both.
Where R U, veggie ombudsman?

(21 MAR 09, Santa Clara CA)v3