RESPONSIBILITY

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, March 30th 2007 at 6:58

    Douglas McLennan, mastermind of ArtsJournal.com, started his very own blog last year, to which he posts about once a month. His latest item is well worth the attention of anyone who is appalled by the rampant stupidity of so many user comments at newspaper sites and blogs. McLennan urges ...

DANCING WITH DEATH

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, March 29th 2007 at 7:07

    In the newest Tucson Weekly, I pass judgment on three more-or-less new plays:

    All three plays that opened locally last week show us women dancing with death: a Jewish teenager interned in Nazi labor camps, three graduates of a Catholic girls' school remembering a classmate who had been murdered years ...

SO SPECIAL

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, March 28th 2007 at 6:53

    We interrupt this lazy stretch of non-blogging to link to a commentary by Eric Williams, who echoes a complaint I’ve had for 20 years:

    It's an amazing bait-and-switch. Every few months, your local PBS station begs you - and Viewers Like You - to support their programming for the rest ...

THE CLASSICAL CD LIVES!

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, March 22nd 2007 at 7:13

    Alex Ross has posted some intriguing and sensible thoughts on the non-death of classical CDs. I trust his analysis, despite ambiguous evidence and conflicting opinions elsewhere. (See Alex’s post for some good links.)
    Coincidentally, yesterday I interviewed the head of arkivmusic.com, and our chat produced evidence to support ...

FRUITY GOODNESS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, March 22nd 2007 at 7:08

    With apologies for my recent lapse in blogging (busy, tired from fighting pertussis for the past month), I now take the easy way out and point you to my reviews in the latest Tucson Weekly. I’m covering two of the three offerings in Arizona Theatre Company’s RepFest.
    First ...

ROMANTIC VIBRATO

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, March 16th 2007 at 8:32

    David Hurwitz, of Classics Today, has posted a 115-page essay denouncing the claims of certain period-performance-practice specialists—mainly Roger Norrington—that continuous vibrato was rare in orchestral string playing before World War II. Hurwitz has had enough of Norrington’s terminally dull forays into Romantic music (I’ve always thought ...

A BORE ONLY A BRIT COULD LOVE

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, March 16th 2007 at 8:28

    English music critic Jessica Duchen adds to the archive of puff pieces that have helped the Brits persuade themselves that Edward Elgar was a great composer, despite abundant evidence to the contrary in the man’s own music. Let’s get this straight: Elgar was a gifted miniaturist, but the ...

ART OF DARKNESS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, March 15th 2007 at 7:26

    Thursday is upon us, and thus a fresh Tucson Weekly, with me in it. First, a preview of a brand-new play:

    One day, Invisible Theatre's Susan Claassen took a break from bidding on eBay auctions of Edith Head costumes, and googled "Jewish plays." The query returned a link to ...

REVIEW: MALCOLM MCNAB/EXQUISITE

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, March 14th 2007 at 8:43

    If you’re not a trumpeter, you’ve never heard the name Malcolm McNab. But you’ve heard him play; since 1970, this Hollywood studio musician has contributed to some 1,500 movie soundtracks, including prominent solo work in Dances with Wolves and L.A. Confidential. When John Williams guest-conducted ...

REVIEW: FABIO BIDINI/TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, March 9th 2007 at 8:26

    Fabio Bidini, as a finalist (but not a medalist) in the 1993 Van Cliburn competition, is expected to play a certain kind of repertory: big, beefy, Romantic Russian piano concertos. And so he does, among other things. Yet last night with the Tucson Symphony, Bidini didn’t play Rachmaninov’s ...

TRAIN WRECKS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, March 8th 2007 at 7:30

    Prowling the nether reaches of the Leo Rich Theater, I came across a Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival musician doing some head-shaking, admitting to me that some colleagues didn’t know their music very well and worrying over some upcoming concerts.
    Well, if some of the musicians have been slacking ...

THE SENSUOUS BIBLIOPHILE

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, March 7th 2007 at 7:09

    In the book review section of Sunday’s New York Times, Ben Schott advocated doing things to books that would bring long prison terms if you did them to children or animals. Didn’t his mommy ever teach him how to take care of things? I really have low tolerance ...

BORDERLANDS PATROL

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, March 5th 2007 at 6:27

    It has belatedly come to attention that there’s a very good article (by Kerri Allen, not by me) in last December’s issue of American Theatre about Tucson’s Borderlands Theater and its efforts to merge the arts and border activism. The article is rather hard to find on ...

CANDID CAMERA

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, March 5th 2007 at 6:26

    I see on the security monitor that one of the burly workers who has just arrived to renovate a room off the main corridor is swinging his arms in time with the Strauss waltz we're piping into the hall. Now, there's a scene to perk up a gloomy ...

INVITATION TO A YAMMERING

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, March 2nd 2007 at 14:20

    The 14th Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival begins this Sunday, and continues through the following Sunday. As usual, it keeps me busy; besides a couple of private gatherings for musicians and for board members like me, I’ll be MCing Thursday’s kiddie matinee, co-teaching an Elderhostel class on chamber ...

HEEDING THE CALL

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, March 2nd 2007 at 14:11

    Yesterday, a fellow from the Music Critics Association of North America informed me that I’d been nominated to run for the organization’s board. After laughing myself into a coughing spasm, I accepted the challenge, even though I doubt I’ll be elected; probably no more than two people ...

RICHARD WAGNER: PAGE 3 GIRL

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, March 1st 2007 at 16:10

    Here’s a sensationalist item you’d expect to find in one of the British tabloids, but not in the respectable Guardian: Richard Wagner was a cross-dresser, maybe. This allegation is based on a previously unpublished letter in which Wagner orders a dress, listing its every frill and bow in ...

POKE AT A 'PIG'

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, March 1st 2007 at 15:55

    In the current Tucson Weekly, I review a late-night production of Neil LaBute’s rather slim Fat Pig:

    Back in his student days, Neil LaBute must have heard the term "theater of cruelty" and decided to make it his own: not the violent shattering of false reality that Antonin Artaud ...