KEEPING AMERICA SAFE FROM VIOLISTS

posted by James Reel

    I keep forgetting to post this, even after having gotten permission from the author, Neil Hughes, a music librarian at the University of Georgia. The inspiration was the announcement in late March that England's Halle orchestra canceled its American tour when the cost of obtaining visas for their players and staff became prohibitively expensive, now that various arms of our government are doing everything they can to keep potential terrorists from entering the country. For the literal-minded among you, I should point out that this is humor:

    I can't believe this...you would actually allow, for example, a foreign viola section into our country without thoroughly vetting them first? Wake up, people! These radicals are known for such heinous acts as tuning to A415Hz while the rest of the orchestra tunes to A440, without posting warnings outside the hall and in the program notes. This can cause North American hearing aids to explode. (The bloody tactic is described in a recently-released CIA document entitled Weapons of Musical Destruction: The Limey Sleeper Cell Situation.)  Individuals from these cells have also been known to play Harold in Italy, and to laugh at their victims while so doing. The larger organizations of which they are a part have also been caught, red-handed, playing concerts comprising nothing but the music of Vaughan Williams (who, suspiciously enough, pronounces his first name as "Rafe," which sounds kinda Arabic to me). "My GOD, not another modal folksong quotation!" one of their recent hostages was heard to cry, just before he hurled himself from the parquet.
    Is this the kind of America you want to see? I say, charge 'em double for those visas, throw up fabricated obstacles at every step of their way, and make 'em stand in line in the back alleys of London until Manchester freezes over. We need to keep our concert halls safe from this sort of insidious blight.

SPROCKETS

posted by James Reel

    For a change, my contribution to the latest Tucson Weekly is about film instead of theater:

    To celebrate the 15th Arizona International Film Festival, held April 20-30, organizer Giulio Scalinger wanted to plan nonstop parties. Unexpectedly for a medium usually associated with fantasy, real life got in the way.
    An important component of every festival is Cine sin Fronteras, exploring the complex U.S.-Mexico border, with screenings and panel discussions revolving around international relations and immigration.
    Well, right now, we've got grizzled old Minutemen camped out in their RVs trying to turn in illegal border crossers, politicians in Phoenix and Washington issuing proposals and counter-proposals on immigration control with an eye toward re-election rather than social justice, and hundreds of thousands of adults and especially high school students demonstrating in support of the rights of undocumented workers and their families.
    All of a sudden, parties seemed beside the point when there were so many films available about current border events.

BLACK THOUGHTS

posted by James Reel

    One reason I haven’t posted in a few days is that I’m busy cataloguing KUAT’s next batch of new CDs, which will be scattered through the May schedule. I’m still working my way through them, but I’ll pause long enough to share with you the greatest frustration of the process: writing the catalog number on the disc booklet.
    A trivial task, right? Just take my government-issued Sharpie fine-point marker and jot four numerals onto the laminated paper, so we know where to find the disc on the shelf. (They’re numbered in order of acquisition; this group brings us up to CD number 4861.) Problem: Record companies have succumbed to a mania for black cover designs.
    And it seems that the higher the quality of the production and packaging, the more likely that the cover will be awash in black ink. Harmonia Mundi is the prime offender, but many other labels follow suit. Black suggests elegance and seriousness of purpose, I suppose, and it’s the one color that will come back from the printer pretty much the way it looks on the designer’s computer screen.
    This may have started back in the 1970s, with those ubiquitous Christian Steiner portraits of pianists in black pullovers, nestled up against their instruments; all you could see were their faces, hands, keyboards, and sometimes piano strings. The images were arresting, if predictable after a while.
    Black does often provide the basis of a striking cover design, but come on, guys, black is so ’90s. Help consumers out with something brighter and more consistently eye-catching, and help me out with colors that are easier to write on. (Yes, I know, I could use white ink, but we don’t have any white Sharpies in the supply room, and yellow or pink highlighters won’t do the job.)
    I never thought I’d say this, but I miss those Musical Heritage Society LP jackets from the 1960s and ’70s. They looked very much like the labels on the cans and boxes of “generic” food sold at bargain prices 30 years ago: simple black type on an all white background. MHS would position the type on the right, run a thick, vertical column rule a little off center, and on the left plop some icky public-domain line art. Cheap, but effective. After all, MHS was a mail-order company, and didn’t have to make fancy covers that would attract browsers at the retail bins.
    Best of all, they were easy to write on.

SUSAN SAYS

posted by James Reel

    This has turned up on the electronic staff bulletin board:

    April 5, 2006 · Enough about Katie Couric. A female news anchor may be a big deal for television, but here at NPR, we recognize a different trailblazer. In 1972, Susan Stamberg became the first woman to host a nightly network news program -- All Things Considered. After holding that job for 14 years, Stamberg has this advice for Couric:

    Here's how long ago it was: In those days, I had a steak-and-cheese sandwich with onions for lunch every day. My first anchor day, I couldn't eat my lunch.
    My advice:
    1. Eat your lunch every day. Veggies.
    2. For your half-hour nightly broadcast, have more than the five reporters we had, for ATC's then-90 minutes.
    3. No catchy graphics. We found we never needed them.
    4. Read and prepare as if your life depended on it.
    5. Combing one's hair was never a priority here, and I can't see why it should be for you.
    6. Read and prepare as if your life depended on it.
    7. Be careful not to repeat yourself.
    8. Don't let anyone tell you a woman won't be taken seriously doing anchor work. Over time, you'll be taken as seriously as you take yourself and your audience. And don't be afraid to laugh. But filter it a bit. It's better to be compassionate, humane, steady.
    9. Get off on time. [James Reel notes: Bob Edwards has said that he expects his tombstone to be inscribed, "He got off on time."]
    10. Don't believe people who promise TEN pieces of advice.

-- Susan Stamberg

ADDENDUM

posted by James Reel

    I forgot to mention that you can also find in the latest Tucson Weekly my Q&A with departing Tucson Symphony Orchestra principal horn player Jacquelyn Sellers.

LONG SWORDS, LITTLE WOMEN

posted by James Reel

    From the intentionally ridiculous to the potentially sublime in the latest Tucson Weekly … First, my review of the latest Gaslight put-on:

    At a theater where the scripts can have more holes than Prairie Dog Town, Gaslight Theatre's latest musical melodrama has only one gaping absence, an unforgivable lost opportunity: The bitter, limping Phillippe, twin brother to King Louis XIV of France, is being prepared by evil forces to seize the throne, but not once does he break into "Great Pretender."
    Really, what is Gaslight coming to when the bad guys miss a chance to turn into The Platters for three minutes?   
    Otherwise, Peter Van Slyke's adaptation of The Three Musketeers trips along smartly enough. It's not one of Van Slyke's funniest, most out-of-control shows, but it doesn't fall with a thud as if skewered by the Musketeers themselves. What this production has going for it most of all is an ensemble that swings through the show with an infectious joy. They may not have a lot to work with, but they're having tremendous fun.

    It's new, it's popular ... and it's an opera.
    Hard to believe, but true. Mark Adamo's Little Women, written for Houston Grand Opera in 1998, is being produced all over the country in an era when operas don't generally get performed after their premieres—and few enough are premiered in the first place. Even the University of Arizona Opera Theater is having a go at Little Women this weekend.