KUPBEAT

posted by James Reel

    I just stumbled across something unexpected: Kupbeat, an archive of interviews conducted by Edward Kupperstein, KUAT's former radio boss and, before that, program director and, before that, music director. According to the home page, "KUPBEAT is a celebration of Edward Kupperstein's dedication to the the arts community in Tucson, Arizona. KUPBEAT presents a series of nearly 700 Arts Upbeat interviews of local arts personalities between 1976 and 2000 for KUAT Radio." There's also some biographical material about Kup, but it doesn't mention that he passed away a few years ago, not too long after he retired from KUAT.

MICHAEL RABIN IN TUCSON

posted by James Reel

    A scholar who is writing a biography of Michael Rabin has asked me for help in confirming or denying a couple of rumors relating to Rabin in Tucson, and I’m striking out (I suppose means that the lack of evidence constitutes denial of the rumors). If you’ve lived in Tucson for at least 35 years, perhaps you know something that my other sources don’t.
    First, the biographer has a tape of Gregory Millar introducing a performance of Paul Creston’s Violin Concerto, followed by a performance of same with Rabin as soloist and Millar apparently conducting the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Now, the TSO’s files show performances of Creston’s music but not the concerto, and performances with Rabin but not the Creston. Do you know of any circumstances under which Millar and Rabin presented the Creston concerto with the TSO, perhaps in a concert outside the orchestra’s normal activities?
    Second, it seems that in the early 1970s Rabin had a contract to teach at the University of Arizona for a year, but the agreement fell through. My guess is that Rabin was supposed to fill in during a sabbatical year for the usual violin prof at that time, John Ferrell. But UA records no longer exist from that period, and I can’t find any old-timers from the music school who remember anything about it.
    If you can confirm or deny either of these stories, please contact me by clicking the e-mail link in the right-hand panel.
    While you’re cogitating on that, I need to get to work on a project concocted by another scholar-pal of mine: the index for Caryl Flinn’s forthcoming biography of Ethel Merman.

LAZY BLOGGING

posted by James Reel

    Recycling is the key to making a living as a freelance writer; write an article for one publication, then contrive to sell a modified version of it to another. It works well for lazy bloggers, too. When you’re too lazy to post an original blog entry, link to something you’ve written elsewhere. So here are a couple of items I contributed to the current issue of Strings magazine.
    First, a profile of an unusual string foursome:

The section quartet consists of two violins, a viola, and a cello, but please don’t call it a string quartet. “We’re a rock band,” insists first violinist, arranger, and founder Eric Gorfain, allowing, however, that “we’re playing classical instruments and we’re classically trained, so we kind of straddle the line.” Cellist Richard Dodd is less willing to compromise. “We play electrified instruments, really hard and loud, like a band,” he says. “I try to play with very little vibrato, and I get a solid bite into the string all the time. It’s a very aggressive style that probably wouldn’t go over too well with many orchestras.”

    Then, because you really desperately want to know about the mechanics of getting a bow from one string across to the next, a technical article for beginning and intermediate players on string crossings:

    If you could attach little lights to the frog and the tip of your bow, darken the room, and play in front of a mirror, you’d see that bowing, and especially crossing, is a matter of geometry as well as artistry. If you were playing well, you’d see those lights make precise little circles and arcs, and every motion at the frog would be mimicked in reverse at the tip.
    It’s what William J. Dick and Laurie P. Scott call the geometry of string crossing. Dick teaches at Southwestern University in Texas and Scott is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Their version of geometry doesn’t require you to brush up on Euclid or memorize the value of pi. But it does put bowing and crossing into the context of planes, lines, and arcs. And if your geometry is symmetrical, your string crossings should be clean.

    That’s how it begins. Now go be fascinated by the rest of it, while I retire to some nice, shaded hammock.