INFORMED DECISIONS

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, April 30th 2007 at 8:55

    Terry Teachout thinks it’s a good idea to honor jazz figures with a Pulitzer Prize, but he says that, for a number of reasons, Ornette Coleman’s Sound Grammar did not deserve this year's award. He ponders, as do I, whether the broadening of Pulitzer eligibility will mean ...

ROSTROPOVICH

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 27th 2007 at 7:34

    Mstislav Rostropovich has died of intestinal cancer at age 80. I won’t bother linking to any articles, because they’re everywhere you look. But I will tell you of one person who, frankly, is not sorry to see Rostropovich go.
    My friend Jeff Joneikis, owner of the mail-order company ...

A MALL AND THE RIGHT VISITORS

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 27th 2007 at 7:26

    The over-hyped arrival of an overrated junk-food chain at El Con Mall has prompted much local discussion about whether or not anything can save the faltering mall. My suggestion: Tear the thing down and put up a resort hotel, the one thing sure to make money in Tucson these days ...

SPANGLISH TRIUMPHS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 26th 2007 at 6:46

    Well, one out of three isn’t too bad:

    There's one excellent reason to see the Catalina Players' trilogy of one-act plays about immigrants: Silviana Wood's And Where Was Pancho Villa When You Really Needed Him? It boasts a quality of writing and acting, and a love and ...

TRYING TIMES

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, April 25th 2007 at 6:30

    I’ve held off linking to this until the series was complete; what suspense! Violist Charles Noble auditions for a job with the Seattle Symphony, and lets us in on what it’s really like, musically and psychologically, to try out for an important orchestra (or any orchestra, really). This ...

DUNBAR SCHOOLING

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, April 24th 2007 at 6:58

    Too busy for blogging, or even first-person pronouns, so for a couple of days you’ll have to settle for links to interesting material found elsewhere. Here’s a fascinating article about an utterly forgotten West Indian conductor, who was the first black guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, among ...

TOMMY HAWKS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 19th 2007 at 8:24

    OK, I’m confused:

    What, exactly, is The Who's rock opera Tommy really trying to tell us? The UA's Arizona Repertory Theatre is putting on a very good production of the show, but in the end, in trying to figure out what writer-composer Pete Townshend's social point ...

UNFAITHFUL

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, April 18th 2007 at 10:26

    Good audio is on the way out, because standards are being set by vast herds of consumers who can’t tell the difference between high fidelity and low, or who maybe can detect a little difference but just don’t care. This has compromised audiophile efforts for decades. Remember the ...

PUNCTUATION PEEVES

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, April 17th 2007 at 7:13

    Yesterday I started proofreading a 400-page self-published book of baseball statistics. I haven’t yet decided whether this counts as suicide or euthanasia. It’s one of those projects that has me screaming by page 2, because by then it’s already obvious that the author will commit some particular ...

PULLING A PULITZER

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, April 17th 2007 at 6:33

    This week’s award of the annual Pulitzer Prize for music to avant-garde jazz musician Ornette Coleman will surely spur a lot of blather about how, for better and worse, the Pulitzer has finally broken its classical chains. But really, nothing has changed. There’s a long, though occasionally interrupted ...

TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, April 16th 2007 at 7:23

    Lots of CDs left for me to catalog for the KUAT library today, so instead of distracting myself with fresh blogging I’ll simply point you to an article I wrote for the latest issue of Strings, on the very obscure subject of crossing from one string to another. If ...

REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS/GEORGE HANSON, CONDUCTOR

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 13th 2007 at 8:39

    George Hanson led the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Chorus last night in a stimulating program any way you look at it. Do you want spiritual stimulation? Meditate on the mystical Medieval texts set by Stephen Paulus in his recent Voices of Light. Want erotic stimulation? Check out the salacious Latin ...

TEODORA MITEVA

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 13th 2007 at 6:51

    A listener has e-mailed me a link to a video of Teodora Miteva playing Bruch’s Kol Nidre, and my correspondent has high praise for Miteva’s performance. I haven’t had a chance to hear enough of it to form my own opinion, but I like what little I ...

CAN YOU DIG IT?

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 12th 2007 at 8:28

    Borderlands Theater’s latest premiere proves to be a mild disappointment:

    Evangeline Ordaz's Hippie Mexicana is partly an affectionate nostalgia trip, looking back at a time when a "trip" didn't necessarily involve going away or falling down. Well, not going away, at least. The play is also a ...

CD REVIEWS: SOL GABETTA, BAIBA SKRIDE

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, April 11th 2007 at 9:15

    Evidence that the major labels have not gone completely down the drain: two fine new concerto discs from Sony/BMG. Now, it’s true that the soloists—cellist Sol Gabetta and violinist Baiba Skride—are tremendously photogenic, but their appeal is more than skin-deep. I just sent in a very ...

CODED MESSAGE

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, April 10th 2007 at 7:00

    A couple of leading online figures have called for a blogger’s code of conduct, and it’s about time. The code of conduct doesn’t so much address the posts of bloggers as the comments posted by readers. You can read the first draft here at Tim O’Reilly ...

THE HIGHER PRICE

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, April 9th 2007 at 15:05

    A friend had considered joining us for this Thursday's Tucson Symphony concert, but then reconsidered. She writes, "It turns out that a ticket, in the front balcony, would cost me $62 -- with Ticketmaster charges etc -- too much -- if it were for Der Rosenkavalier or Magic Flute I would do ...

LOWERING THE COMMON DENOMINATOR

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 6th 2007 at 14:51

    When the Tucson Symphony announced its 2007-08 season a couple of weeks ago, I was appalled. Now that I’ve looked at the schedule a few more times and given it further thought, it doesn’t seem to pander to the lowest-common denominator audience as much as I initially thought ...

TRIALS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 5th 2007 at 13:40

    I had a couple of good nights at the theater last weekend, and you can read about them in the latest Tucson Weekly. First, something special for Easter:

    I am happy to report that my expectations had been dashed by the time I staggered out of Stark Naked Productions' three-hour ...

RAPID PROGRESS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, April 5th 2007 at 12:59

    Well, here’s a fine howdy-do. After arguing for a very long time about whether or not Tucson really needs a big new arena, and then becoming sympathetic to the Tucson Convention Center’s complaint that it can’t accommodate big conferences—sympathy that intensified about a month ago, when ...

TASTY

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, April 4th 2007 at 8:04

    Apropos of nothing, I have just read television writer Jane Espenson's description of what she ate for lunch on July 26, 2006: "tongue sandwich from Art's Deli. It's exciting because it tastes you back!"

PS

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, April 4th 2007 at 6:33

    Regarding the silliness of the “death of the classical CD” stories, Alex Ross offers a reality check: He finds that the number of new classical releases listed in Gramophone magazine has nearly doubled since 1988.
    And regarding my complaint about the journalistic laziness of parroting the numbers from campaign finance ...

KILL THESE STORIES

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, April 3rd 2007 at 7:16

    The Guardian has published yet another hand-wringing article on the death of the classical CD industry. Please, let’s stop this foolishness. Yes, the major labels—Sony, BMG, EMI, DG, Decca and a couple of others—went lemming on us and followed each other over the cliff of corporate stupidity ...

ELSEWHERE

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, April 2nd 2007 at 6:48

    I’m scrambling to meet some writing deadlines, so in lieu of doing something original here today I’ll just point you to things I’m involved with elsewhere. If you’re a beginning to intermediate string player, you may have some interest in an article I put together on ...