AMERICAN DREAMERS

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, May 30th 2007 at 7:17

    No blogging here recently, because I’ve been scrambling to meet end-of-month deadlines a little before the end of the month; at lunchtime today, I’m off on a short visit to Charleston to attend a conference of testy music critics and sample the Spoleto Festival USA. And that means ...

DIVISI

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 25th 2007 at 6:50

    In his Orange County Register review of a Philadelphia Orchestra tour concert, Timothy Mangan identifies trouble that Philly shares with the Tucson Symphony:

    The way that [conductor Christoph] Eschenbach has the orchestra seated may be a problem. The first and second violins are split right and left, and the cellos ...

JUMP THE SHARK

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 24th 2007 at 6:11

    My latest review in the Tucson Weekly:

A play titled Swimming in the Shallows invites easy jokes about its lack of substance. And, indeed, Adam Bock's work of that name, currently running at Invisible Theatre, does emphasize cleverness over content. Nevertheless, while Swimming in the Shallows isn't very ...

DISTINCTIVE?

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, May 23rd 2007 at 6:54

    Simon Heffer’s defense of Elgar in the Telegraph is typical English boosterism. The basic argument: Elgar was great because he was English! Heffer tosses out a few superlatives for Elgar’s weakest works (the Violin Concerto, the Second Symphony, The Coma of Gerontius) without ever identifying anything that gives ...

SCORE!

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, May 22nd 2007 at 9:51

    Thanks to a link provided by Patricia Mitchell, I’ve been downloading lots of public-domain scores from the International Music Score Library Project. It’s not entirely easy to fish out specific things, like pieces for cello and piano, because of inconsistent titling and organizing (which is what happens when ...

MY OTHER CAR IS A CELLO

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, May 21st 2007 at 9:44

    Harry, my cello teacher, sent me a link to an interview with his old teacher, George Neikrug, who spent some time talking about one of his old teachers, Demetrius Dounis. Most of Neikrug’s comments fall in line with what Harry has been telling me for two years, including this ...

WINNERS

From the desk of James Reel on Saturday, May 19th 2007 at 14:33

    Jimmy Boegle, esteemed editor of the Tucson Weekly, offers this response to my rant against journalism competitions:

    I agree with most of the points you make in your anti-journalism-contest blog screed. I also agreed with most of it when it was in Media Watch long ago.
    You’re right that ...

BOOK AUTHORS: THE DEFENSIVE LINE

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 18th 2007 at 7:39

    A magazine asked me to write a Mstislav Rostropovich retrospective upon the cellist’s death, so I’ve been interviewing a number of cellists who knew him. I’d also hoped to talk to pianist Lambert Orkis, who performed with Rostropovich for 12 years (today, he’s most closely associated ...

'SOAR' WINNERS

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 17th 2007 at 7:25

    You know there’s not much going on in local theater when I start previewing heartwarming productions written by children, from whom I usually keep a safe distance:

    Writers sweat over every precious word, but once their work is picked up for production, that original sweat gets wrung out of ...

MOZART EFFECT REVISITED

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, May 15th 2007 at 7:23

    Here's something that was floating around the Internet a couple of years ago; I got it from a colleague, tucked it away into an obscure folder, and just now rediscovered it. For your amusement:

    A new report now says that the Mozart effect is a fraud. For you hip ...

REVIEW: STEVEN MOECKEL/DAVID LOCKINGTON/TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 11th 2007 at 9:00

    The Tucson Symphony’s season-closing program consists of one masterpiece, one mantelpiece and a curio. It was an all-English program, so that’s par for the course.
    First, the curiosity: the concert overture The Gale of Life, written last year by Philip Sawyers, and given only its second performance last ...

STRESSED OUT

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 10th 2007 at 9:11

    Last week, as co-master-of-ceremonies of the student chamber music showcase at the UA school of music, I spent some time backstage double-checking the pronunciations of performers’ names. One instrumentalist brightened and said, “I’m flattered someone would ask!” I imagine she’s gone through 16 years of schooling, her teachers ...

NICE 'MICE'

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 10th 2007 at 8:03

    Today’s Tucson Weekly holds two reviews by yours truly, one enthusiastic, the other ambivalent. First, the good news: Of Mice and Men at Beowulf Alley:

The entire production has been assembled with quiet care. The acting tends to be subtle and anti-melodramatic, yet heartfelt; the pacing is deliberate, yet ...

UNCOMPETITIVE

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, May 8th 2007 at 7:57

    Sunday, most newspapers in Arizona bragged about their achievements in this year’s Associated Press Managing Editors News Writing and Photo Contest. The Arizona Daily Star announced that it won eight first-place awards, among other honors.
    It ought to be ashamed.
    Why? Because only one of those first-place awards was ...

'STRINGS' ATTACHED

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 4th 2007 at 9:07

    Saving me the effort of writing anything new as I recover from the two-week pledge drive, parts of the latest issue of Strings magazine are online, including two parts by me. No doubt you will be fascinated by my primer on sight reading (says my source, “Great sight-readers overlook the ...

VICTORY

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 4th 2007 at 7:35

    The pledge drive is finally over! The end comes a week late, but no dollars short: $51,429 is the initial tally, on a goal of $50,000. After two weeks of this, I feel like I've just been through fundraising boot camp, plus a tour of combat duty ...

PUMPED

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, May 3rd 2007 at 6:04

    Still immersed in the Fund-Raising Campaign That Will Not Die, still no time for original blogging, insofar as anything I do here is original. Merely a link to my latest piece in the Tucson Weekly:

    Hal Hundley's back in town. He's started a new musical theater company, and ...