STRETCH

posted by James Reel

    In the latest Tucson Weekly, I offer an update on a former UA cello professor:

    Cellist Nancy Green has performed all over the world, her recordings have gotten exceptionally positive reviews, her extroverted style is often compared to that of Jacqueline du Pré, and she had a secure job on the UA music faculty.
    But a year ago, she gave up the academic life and stopped traveling around. Right now, if you want to hear her live, you can find her every Wednesday night playing for a yoga class.
    This is not one of those stories about how the mighty have fallen. Green is very carefully guiding her career in exactly the direction she wants.
    "I took a leap into the abyss," she says of her decision to leave the UA a year ago. "With my son graduating from high school, I've had a feeling of crossing the finish line--all these years of single parenting took a lot out of me. I wanted to live a life that was more grounded. I wanted to do more playing, but I don't want to do a lot of jetting around."

LABELS AND PIGEONHOLES

posted by James Reel

    By coincidence, two bloggers in the past couple of days have addressed the issue of categorizing composers past and present. Kyle Gann, a composer himself associated with the Downtown set (a group easier to describe by what it is not than by the many things it is), considers his position in relation to the genre-crossing Hollywood director William Wyler. On the other side of the continent, Timothy Mangan uses examples from the past two centuries to dismiss the notion that labels are limiting: “As if any label were so limiting that it didn't encompass many styles. As if any label were so limiting that applying it would keep (a classical) artist from pursuing his latest Gershwin project. Labels don't work that way.”