YOURS, MINE AND OURS

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 28th 2006 at 8:05

    Greg Sandow’s blog is devoted to serious and provocative thinking about the future of classical music. He’s a populist, though, and many of his ideas strike the traditionalists among us as fatal dumbing-down of the music we love. I don’t count myself among Greg’s detractors, but ...

SNOW JOB

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 27th 2006 at 6:59

    With the blog broken yesterday, I couldn’t post this complaint when it was truly fresh, but it should have a fair shelf life, alas.
    Why did NPR chose to lead each of its hourly newscasts, all day long, with an item about Fox News pundit Tony Snow being named ...

IS THERE A SCRIPT DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 27th 2006 at 6:53

    Arizona Theatre Company is presenting Tuesdays with Morrie. It’s got a good director and two-man cast, but otherwise I’m not impressed:

    The house lights dim, and the curtain rises on Morrie Schwartz, a popular but aged sociology professor at Brandeis University. Morrie does a loose-limbed little dance for ...

HOW I SPENT THE WEEKEND

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, April 24th 2006 at 7:51

    Here’s what I’ve done since Friday afternoon:
    1. For myself: I started working in a new key (F major) and third position on the cello. If I keep at it, in a few months I’ll be able to play ineptly in all 24 keys, all over the ...

THE FUTURE OF READING

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 21st 2006 at 7:31

    About three months ago, Sony unveiled its latest supposedly revolutionary gadget, which it calls the Sony Reader. This is the latest variation on the e-book, a portable electronic device that can download, store and display thousands and thousands of text pages, until the battery dies. (Let’s hope Sony Reader batteries are easier to replace or recharge than the iPod’s.)
    Various iterations of the e-book have been around for years, but the technology has never caught on. Perhaps the Sony Reader has overcome the gadget’s many inadequacies, but I doubt that I’ll be investing one anytime soon. An essay I wrote in the late 1990s, at the height of extravagant claims for the inevitable primacy of electronic storage and display over the traditional book, is now a bit dated, but I still hold to these near-Luddite opinions.

PLAY TIME

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 20th 2006 at 7:03

    I heartily approve of both productions I review in the latest Tucson Weekly. And yes, I very much like the performances in She Loves Me at the UA, even though the score is, regrettably, forgettable:

    She Loves Me was the last middling success (only 303 performances--not a spectacular run) of ...

LESS PLATTER, MORE CHATTER

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, April 19th 2006 at 7:21

    An article in the Chicago Tribune describes outrage among Chicago’s jazz-establishment personalities over news that the city’s three bundled public radio stations will switch from music programming to talk in early 2007. People seem especially upset over the loss of the jazz and world music format of WBEZ-FM ...

AURAL SOMINEX?

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, April 17th 2006 at 6:47

    Rich Russell objects to radio announcers promoting classical music as “relaxing,” and so do I. What Rich probably doesn’t realize is that there’s a widespread, consultant-generated effort among radio stations to assure potential listeners that classical music is “relaxing”—hence, not threatening—because a survey taken a few ...

KEEPING AMERICA SAFE FROM VIOLISTS

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 14th 2006 at 18:47

    I keep forgetting to post this, even after having gotten permission from the author, Neil Hughes, a music librarian at the University of Georgia. The inspiration was the announcement in late March that England's Halle orchestra canceled its American tour when the cost of obtaining visas for their players ...

SPROCKETS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 13th 2006 at 6:59

    For a change, my contribution to the latest Tucson Weekly is about film instead of theater:

    To celebrate the 15th Arizona International Film Festival, held April 20-30, organizer Giulio Scalinger wanted to plan nonstop parties. Unexpectedly for a medium usually associated with fantasy, real life got in the way.
    An ...

BLACK THOUGHTS

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, April 12th 2006 at 7:13

    One reason I haven’t posted in a few days is that I’m busy cataloguing KUAT’s next batch of new CDs, which will be scattered through the May schedule. I’m still working my way through them, but I’ll pause long enough to share with you the greatest frustration of the process: writing the catalog number on the disc booklet.
    A trivial task, right? Just take my government-issued Sharpie fine-point marker and jot four numerals onto the laminated paper, so we know where to find the disc on the shelf. (They’re numbered in order of acquisition; this group brings us up to CD number 4861.) Problem: Record companies have succumbed to a mania for black cover designs.

SUSAN SAYS

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 7th 2006 at 8:40

    This has turned up on the electronic staff bulletin board:

    April 5, 2006 · Enough about Katie Couric. A female news anchor may be a big deal for television, but here at NPR, we recognize a different trailblazer. In 1972, Susan Stamberg became the first woman to host a nightly network ...

ADDENDUM

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 6th 2006 at 16:29

    I forgot to mention that you can also find in the latest Tucson Weekly my Q&A with departing Tucson Symphony Orchestra principal horn player Jacquelyn Sellers.

LONG SWORDS, LITTLE WOMEN

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 6th 2006 at 7:47

    From the intentionally ridiculous to the potentially sublime in the latest Tucson Weekly … First, my review of the latest Gaslight put-on:

    At a theater where the scripts can have more holes than Prairie Dog Town, Gaslight Theatre's latest musical melodrama has only one gaping absence, an unforgivable lost opportunity ...

THE CLASSICAL MANIFESTO

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, April 4th 2006 at 6:46

    As I’ve written before, I’m not enthusiastic about how classical music fits into the world of iPods and downloads. It’s not that I’m a Luddite; the quality and organization simply aren’t good enough, and I believe that innovation should bolster quality along with—or ahead ...

DEFENCE OF THE REALM

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, April 3rd 2006 at 6:34

    Regarding my little rant about British critics and Elgar, the most civilized Bernard Chasan responds:

I have been using my ears for many many years and my ears tell me that Elgar is one of the greats—the concerti, the two official symphonies, Sea Pictures, are all first rate. I ...