REVIEW: BARRY DOUGLAS/TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, September 28th 2007 at 8:33

    There’s nothing less imaginative than a “Three Bs” concert—Bach, Beethoven, Brahms—unless one goes fishing around for some attractive oddities among those thrice-familiar composers’ works. That’s what George Hanson did last night to launch his 12th season as music director of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. The first ...

MERMAN VS. SHAKESPEARE

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, September 27th 2007 at 7:22

    Invisible Theatre is running a sweet little show called The Big Voice—God or Merman?

    Now, here's a real odd couple. Jim is an extroverted Brooklyn Catholic who, as a boy, dreamed of becoming pope, mainly because he liked the clothes. Steve is an introverted Arkansas Baptist who, as ...

SASO CONDUCTING CANDIDATES

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, September 24th 2007 at 14:46

    This press release just arrived from the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra:

    The Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra has named four finalists for Music Director and invited them to conduct the orchestra during the 2007-2008 season.
     More than 50 candidates from the United States and abroad applied for this position, according to ...

DIAMOND MUSIC

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, September 21st 2007 at 7:10

    Got an extra million dollars lying around the house? You can trade it for fake diamonds made from Beethoven’s hair.

SYMPHONY STRIFE

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, September 20th 2007 at 7:50

    Dave Devine’s contribution to the current Weekly is a good story about the feud between the Tucson Symphony Society—the formal entity that is the Tucson Symphony Orchestra—and what was formerly known as the Tucson Symphony Women’s Association. The way Dave tells it, this looks like a ...

BUT NEITHER BORROWED NOR BLUE

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, September 20th 2007 at 7:39

    Something old, or at least expected, and something new from me in the latest Tucson Weekly. First, the usual theater review:

    Did you know that "George Gershwin" is a registered trademark? Yeah, sure, Gershwin was certainly not ashamed to make money as a songwriter, and he was a great composer ...

ARRR!

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, September 19th 2007 at 7:10

    Elgar? Keelhaul the scurvy dog!
    Something I won’t be saying on the air, even though this is “Talk Like a Pirate Day.”

FAILING AT A HIGHER LEVEL

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, September 18th 2007 at 7:17

    Drew McManus of Adaptistration has begun issuing his annual evaluation of orchestra Web sites, and there’s news good and bad for the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Drew ranks the TSO’s site as 49 out of 84, up 12 positions from last year, but the site’s overall grade remains ...

WILL TOO POWERLESS

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, September 17th 2007 at 10:32

    In my post about the English consortium questioning the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, I overlooked the main implication of this set of questions: “The 287-strong Shakespeare Authorship Coalition says it is not possible that the bard's plays—with their emphasis on law—could have been penned by a ...

SHAKING THEIR SPEAR

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, September 14th 2007 at 9:55

    There’s long been controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, and now the 287-member Shakespeare Authorship Coalition has signed a "declaration of reasonable doubt," hoping it will spur responsible scholarly research into the subject.
    Well, there has already been responsible scholarly research, which has led to almost as ...

CHERRIES AND ROSES

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, September 13th 2007 at 7:47

    I saw two very good productions last weekend, and you can see them, too, if you hie thee to the theater in time. One was the Rogue Theatre’s version of The Cherry Orchard:

    The question that drives the action of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard will resonate with ...

BOOKISH EXHIBITIONISM

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, September 12th 2007 at 7:40

    When I'm too busy or too lazy to do any original blogging, it's time to dig around in the archive of a literary e-zine for which I used to write and recycle some essay that's not too dated. Here's one for you:

Show Me The Books ...

HEARING AID

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, September 11th 2007 at 7:35

    We radio announcers can listen to ourselves any number of ways. Of course, there’s the old hand-cupped-to-the-ear technique made famous by Gary Owen (an actual DJ at the time) on Laugh-In back in the late 1960s. But we also have many technological options. Here in the KUAT-FM control room ...

SELF-CENTERED BUT HARMLESS DIVERSION

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, September 7th 2007 at 8:31

    According to this site, mine was the third most popular male name in the year I was born, and according to this site, it was the top-ranked name in the 1950s (at least in the United States). And yours?

ALL A-QUIVER

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, September 6th 2007 at 7:17

    As a theater critic, I don’t write raves very often, so it’s somehow a little embarrassing that I enthuse this week over a silly little farce:

    Gaslight Theatre's treatment of The Adventures of Robin Hood is by no means a straight-arrow affair. Writer-director Peter Van Slyke has ...