LEFTOVERS

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, May 31st 2006 at 7:17

    In yesterday’s post about the Mariachi Cobre/Tucson Symphony concerts, I didn’t find an appropriate opportunity to praise two particular elements.
    First, nine members of the mariachi group opened the concert with an a cappella performance of the national anthem (yes, in English); with its combination of near-barbershop ...

BROWNING THE AUDIENCE

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, May 30th 2006 at 8:37

    Over the weekend I attended two cultural events that drew disproportionate numbers of Hispanics. One was the Borderlands Theater production of the bilingual play El Deseo/Desire; the other was a performance by Mariachi Cobre with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Wouldn’t it be grand if that sort of turnout ...

BULLETIN: SKY NOT FALLING

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, May 29th 2006 at 10:37

    Allan Kozinn of the New York Times is fed up with premature reports of the death of classical music:

    Moaning about the state of classical music has itself become an industry. But as pervasive as the conventional wisdom is, much of it is based on sketchy data incorrectly interpreted. Were ...

FIRST BASS

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 26th 2006 at 7:12

    When bassist François Rabbath was in Tucson a few months ago, I snagged him for a profile that now appears in Strings magazine:

    “It’s a dream to write music for him because there’s virtually nothing he can’t do,” says composer and bassist Frank Proto.
    “He has ...

BACK BURNER

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 25th 2006 at 7:31

    Forget theater as a gourmet meal. Here’s a play about a would-be cooking-show host that’s more like a TV dinner:

    Playwright Jim Brochu became a good pal of Lucille Ball in her last years, and it's easy to see why they got along so well. Brochu's ...

EMPANELED

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, May 23rd 2006 at 7:35

    Yesterday I went to Phoenix to serve on an Arizona Commission on the Arts panel evaluating grant applications from music organizations. The commission staff seemed pleased with how well we panelists worked together; most of us had done our homework, and we made our way through the 40 applications thoroughly ...

ECLAIR SUR L'AU-DELA

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, May 23rd 2006 at 7:07

    From a review in the local morning daily of a concert at the deaf-and-blind school in which Dmitri Kabalevsky’s The Comedians was accompanied by computer-generated abstract images:

    Russian composer Dmitry Kabalevsky would likely have chuckled at the sight Sunday afternoon. …
    Yes, Kabalevsky would have delighted in seeing the dynamic ...

MASSAGING THE MEDIUM

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 19th 2006 at 7:16

    This week, Douglas McLennan’s Artsjournal.com hosted a debate among several arts reviewers: Critical Edge: Critics in an Online Age. It looked promising, given the themes McLennan outlined on the first day:

    With a growing flood of opinions available to all, some suggest that the influence of the traditional ...

CLEAR CONSCIENCE

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 19th 2006 at 6:31

    Listener Gail Warren writes:
    "I have decided that once one becomes a regular contributor, listening to the pledge drives actually becomes fun (?). As a music major and basically a "musician" since the age of 9 (piano), classical is the music of my life. But, like so many others, financial considerations ...

PLAZA SUITE ENSUITE

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 18th 2006 at 7:53

    Burt Schneider, KUAZ’s local host for All Things Considered, has this to say about my post concerning how the non-interactivity of broadcasting will defeat our dreams of making KUAT a community “plaza”:

I agree with you about the plaza concept. It's a catchy idea, but realistically doesn't ...

LOCALS 'BOYS' MAKE GOOD

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 18th 2006 at 7:30

    This past week, I had the most pleasant kind of surprise you can experience in the theater. I went to a show put on by a community troupe, ready to make allowances for the usual weaknesses, but witnessed work on a much higher level than I would ever expect from ...

COME BACK!

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, May 17th 2006 at 7:00

    The membership drive has ended, two days early. It's safe to tune in again. We're just airing music and news now.
    This campaign seemed awfully grueling from the staff perspective. I'll let others theorize why. All I can say is that during some pledge periods, I was ...

PLAZA SUITE

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, May 16th 2006 at 8:07

    Last week, I attended a KUAT staff meeting in which we brainstormed ideas for our new mission and vision statements. (Whatever one thinks of such exercises, there’s no denying that an organization—or an individual—needs to have a clearly articulated reason for being.) An especially popular concept was ...

MORE ON RECORDED NEWSCASTS

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 12th 2006 at 9:14

    KUAT/KUAZ newsman Nelson Warnell protests being lumped among the people who record their newscasts a few minutes before air time:
    "FYI, I ALWAYS do my newscasts live (except for the 5:04 because Bill Pitts feels more comfortable having it in the audio vault). I feel it is a ...

THE O.C., CLASSICAL DIVISION

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 12th 2006 at 7:57

    A couple of months ago, the blogosphere welcomed a new online journal by Timothy Mangan, the Orange County Register’s classical music writer, critic and resident trombone player. It’s well worth exploring; he calls it “Classical Life.”

GORDON EPPERSON

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 12th 2006 at 7:46

    Retired University of Arizona cello professor Gordon Epperson died Tuesday. I interviewed him for a newspaper article several years ago, and I didn’t know him personally, but he did immediately strike me as a very nice, genial person, and that impression is supported by the testimony of those who ...

GOLDEN POND

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 11th 2006 at 13:05

    I've got just one review in the slender arts section of the latest Tucson Weekly:

    Over the past couple of months, old movies have unspooled all over Tucson stages. The UA offered the original theatrical version of The Philadelphia Story; another troupe mounted Deathtrap, and now Live Theatre Workshop ...

NEWS OF THE DAY

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, May 10th 2006 at 10:43

    NPR can be as bad as any cable TV channel about hammering non-stories to death all through the day, but this morning the news division did a nice job of mixing items from hour to hour, getting new details on the stories being followed in every newscast, passing along the ...

CHARACTER FLAWS

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, May 8th 2006 at 9:03

    1. At vending machines, I reach for the change before I reach for the food.
    2. I love my friends, but I’m most comfortable when I’m alone (not counting the presence of wife and dog).
    3. Family heirlooms are best sent to yard sales; if I cherish anything ...

ENGLISH ONLY?

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 5th 2006 at 8:30

    Um, can this message deposited at the KUAT Web site after we played the Mozart Requiem be serious?

You know that it is becoming more difficult by the day to find anyone who speaks English. Sometimes I wonder if I'm still in the United States. There is a major ...

REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/GUILLERMO FIGUEROA

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 5th 2006 at 8:12

    What happened to the tam-tam? At the end of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, the full orchestra punches out a series of loud, crackling chords; the last one includes a tam-tam stroke that should reverberate for half a bar after the rest of the orchestra has gone silent. Rachmaninov wants the work to end not with a bang, but a shimmer. But last night’s Tucson Symphony performance under guest conductor Guillermo Figueroa ended merely with the pounding full-orchestra chords, no tam-tam to be heard. Was Figueroa wrongheadedly trying to make Rachmaninov’s music more tasteful? Or did the designated percussionist simply forget to step over to the tam-tam for the last couple of measures?
    It’s unfortunate that these were the thoughts knocking around in my head as I left the concert hall, because nearly everything that had happened up to that last note was splendid. In fact, this was one of the finest TSO performances I’ve heard in a long time.

DEADLY, FARCE

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 4th 2006 at 8:03

    In the latest Tucson Weekly, I give measured approval to Beowulf Alley’s Chekhov compilation …

    Anton Chekhov's characters can be so annoying. The whining, the self-pity, the vanity, the depression ... for all their psychological acuity, Chekhov's serious plays are nearly done in by one or two dreary figures ...

... AND THEIRS

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, May 1st 2006 at 7:48

    A couple of external addenda to my post “Yours, Mine and Ours”:
    Compulsively readable oboist-blogger Patricia Mitchell goes off on her own typically gentle ramble on the subject of differing musical tastes, while compulsively readable firebrand A.C. Douglas offers his own typically scorching reply to the Greg Sandow post ...